A turbine blade for a gas turbine engine includes an airfoil including leading and trailing edges joined by spaced apart pressure and suction sides to provide an exterior airfoil surface extending in a radial direction. A substantially cylindrical workpiece is loaded into a workpiece support, and a robotic welding arm is positioned located at a start position. If the first time interval does not result in the pinhole closing, the software client instructs the network server to send messages to the computing device that trigger the computing device to send keep alive messages to the server according to a second, longer time interval.