ESAB — Welders, Wire & Cutting Systems

The brand that invented the coated electrode. Still going after 120 years.

In 1904, a Swedish ship engineer named Oscar Kjellberg was fed up with the way metal got joined. Welding existed but the welds were brittle, contaminated, and unreliable — a problem when you're building ships meant to cross oceans. So he rented a workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden, and started experimenting. What he came up with was the world's first coated electrode — a flux-covered rod that vaporized on contact, shielding the molten weld pool from the atmosphere and producing clean, strong, consistent welds nobody had managed before. He patented it in 1907. He named the company Elektriska Svetsnings-Aktiebolaget. You know it as ESAB.

Every coated electrode ever made since traces back to that workshop in Gothenburg. Every OK-branded welding rod you've ever picked up carries Kjellberg's initials. That's not a marketing claim — it's a fact written into the product itself.

What ESAB built from that single invention is one of the most comprehensive welding and cutting catalogs in the industry. MIG and TIG welders. Stick machines. Multi-process platforms. The Rebel EMP — the machine that put serious multi-process capability in a 21-pound package. The Sentinel welding helmet, widely considered the best auto-darkening hood on the market. Welding wire in every alloy you'll run. Plasma cutting systems for fabrication shops and production floors. Submerged arc, hardfacing, stainless, aluminum — ESAB makes the consumables and the machine to run them on.

120 years in. Publicly traded on the NYSE. Operating in 147 countries across six continents. Still building the products welders actually use to build things.

Banditos is an authorized ESAB dealer. Every machine, electrode, and wire ships genuine, warranty-supported, and backed by people who know the difference between a Rebel and a Rogue. Free shipping* on orders over $199 across Canada, or pickup at Lethbridge, Taber, or Cranbrook.