 Hundreds of welders gathered today at Central Lakes College in Brainerd for the annual Behind the Mask competition. And as Clayton Castle tells us, the competition shows us that welding serves an integral purpose in our society. Today marked the American Welding Society's annual Behind the Mask welding competition hosted this year by Central Lakes College in Brainerd. The competition brought in over 100 students from universities and career and technical colleges all across Minnesota to compete in welding skills challenges. And every year we host this event for individuals from and it's mostly college students that compete but sometimes professionals as well that compete in oxyfuel cutting, SMAW or shielded metal arc welding, the stick welding process, the gas metal arc welding process, and the gas tungsten arc welding process. Now for those who don't know what welding is it's combining metal and metal alloys through an immense amount of heat and you'd be surprised to know that it actually plays an important role in society. All your buildings that you go into that are more than one story and a lot of one-story buildings are schools are you know office buildings around the state and in your local communities are all probably have some welded structures in them the stairwells the ironwork that goes into them. In addition to the competition the event also had a raffle and welding simulations in the lobby while the competition isn't held in Brainerd every year Central Lakes College was happy to jump on the hosting train this year. It's kind of an opportunity for us to showcase what we have to offer here. It's pretty exciting this shop has been revitalized a little bit in the last couple years we've got a lot of new equipment and upgrades and it's really neat to be able you know get that out in the public and let other schools see that and and brainstorm with these other instructors about what they're doing and what we're doing and try and make welding all and all better for everybody. Next year's location for the competition hasn't been selected yet but it will be faced with a tall task as this year's competition at Central Lakes College is the largest in the competition's history in Brainerd Clayton Castle Lakeland News. After the competition the American Welding Society held a banquet dinner where the winners of the competition were announced. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.