Pro Spot International hosted a virtual welding contest to educate attendees and bring attention to the importance of training at this year’s AASP Northeast Show held in Secaucus, N.J., in March.

Ron Olsson, president of Pro Spot International, explained that teaching welding can be difficult, and as with all technical skills, practice is required. Pro Spot designed the simulator to cover a variety of weld techniques and applications to fully simulate today’s demanding collision repair environment. Participants used the weld simulator to demonstrate their skills and learn what their strengths and weaknesses are. The competition was judged by averaging each participant’s scores in the speed, work angle, arc length, straightness, travel length, stickout and defects.

This year’s winner of the Pro Spot Virtual Welding Tournament was Anthony Dworniczak, of Mario’s Complete Auto and Collision Repair in Philadelphia. Dworniczak was awarded a new big-screen TV as the grand prize.

“We really want to work on education and training within the industry as well as introducing the technology to more schools,” said Ashley Olsson, communications director for Pro Spot. “Providing solutions that allow technicians to constantly improve their skill is extremely important to our company.”