Utah welding student will represent the U.S. in a world competition

CARBON COUNTY — Utah State University Eastern student Wyatt Hansen will represent the U.S. at the 47th WorldSkills welding competition in France after winning the U.S. competition last week in Alabama.

He says the national competition was intense. The WorldSkills competition is akin to the Olympics for an athlete.

“The national competition that I just won consists of four different modules,” Hansen said. “Module one is a set of test plates. Module two you have a pressure vessel, which is like a big box or whatever that has a ton of different little pieces. Module three is the aluminum project which they call widgets.  Stainless project is module four.”

He says they had 18 hours over four days to complete the four modules.

“All these projects, they don’t really have a use other than being designed and set up with the hardest welds out in [the] industry and designed to be easily graded,” Hansen said. “All these projects are designed to literally be able to test the welder to see who the best welder is.”

“Everything on these projects gets created one way or another and so you have to make everything look good and score good and everything just tie in and make everything smooth.”

Hansen says to get ready for the competition, he was welding 14 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week.  He says the trainers told him to take a week off before starting to get ready to represent the U.S. at the welding competition in Lyon, France this September.

Another Utah welder, Benjamin Cornaby, took second place at the nationwide competition in Alabama. 

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