A Swedish store MIG welds heavy buckets for excavators. The truth that the robotic is simple to maneuver to the workpiece, as a substitute of getting to maneuver the workpiece to the robotic, is a giant benefit.
Collaborative robot-based welding methods—or cobots—have come a great distance in just some years. Due to the emergence of recent welding capabilities and more and more intuitive programming strategies, cobots with larger attain have hit the market. The primary wave of cobot-based welding robots sometimes had been used for easy welding jobs and mounted on a set desk, however the newest developments can deal with much more complicated weldments with exterior axis positioners, linear rails, and coordinated movement.
Welding cobots develop guide welder productiveness by elevating arc time per shift, expediting changeovers, and accelerating the setup of recent components. As well as, these welder-friendly, moveable robots drive up manufacturing high quality and consistency by enhancing course of repeatability and lowering rework queues.
And crucially, given the turnover in welding labor, cobots can enhance welder engagement and retention by caring for the unfulfilling, unergonomic, repetitive, and unsafe welding duties. This reduces welder publicity to hazards and the bodily toll of welding, enabling the employee to give attention to extra artistic and value-adding duties.
And if the primary wave of cobots had been greatest fitted to high-mix, low-volume duties, as we speak’s main cobots can simply deal with conventional high-volume manufacturing and have even discovered a candy spot in medium-mix, high-volume environments.
At this time’s main welding cobots can tackle jobs that had been as soon as completely related to conventional welding automation and at a fraction of the price of deploying and managing conventional welding robots. In consequence, the road separating cobots from conventional industrial robots has blurred much more.
Portability: New Territory and New Functions
Cobots stay actually distinctive in a single space of automated welding: portability. That is creating alternatives to introduce robotic welding the place conventional welding robots haven’t been in a position to go.
A cobot’s portability permits customers to carry the robotic to the weld, quite than bringing the weld to the robotic. As an example, cobots could be picked up and moved simply and even mounted on momentary tracks to make their approach across the workspace to the subsequent weld, enabling them to carry out virtually limitless massive welds on ships and different heavy tools, on each curved and flat surfaces. Cobots can go the place no welding robotic has gone earlier than.
Light-weight Automation
The important thing to cobot portability lies in its gentle weight and small type issue. Cobots are clean, with rounded edges to boost security when deployed near people. However that’s simply a part of the image.
Their light-weight nature, mixed with the power to work in areas much like human employees—the place conventional robots battle—means they’ll simply be picked up, positioned on a dolly, and moved round or repositioned.
With their approachable usability and ease of programming, cobots carry a extra human-friendly (and far much less intimidating) expertise than conventional welding automation.
Conventional robots aren’t ultimate in low-volume, high-mix manufacturing environments that cope with massive, difficult-to-move workpieces. Cobots permit retailers to carry the robotic to the work—quite than the opposite approach round.
On this context, consider cobots at the beginning as easy-to-use instruments designed to complement what an individual can weld manually. They are often introduced with the welder to the work, like a carpenter’s hammer or a plumber’s wrench.
In sensible phrases, cobot portability creates alternatives to deploy automation shortly and conveniently on massive weldments and heavy tools. These are jobs that up till now required guide welds, typically in harmful places and unergonomic positions. Bringing the welding cobot to the work is like giving a welding robotic a VIP all-access move to welding jobs, no matter how large or awkward the welding challenge necessities are.
It additionally makes welding automation adoption sensible for brand spanking new fabricators throughout new sectors together with power manufacturing tools, municipal infrastructure, development, yellow items, and agricultural tools.
Ranges of Portability
There are alternative ways to carry a welding cobot to the weld. Let’s take a look at some examples, beginning with entry-level portability and ending with the last word in versatile, moveable automation.
In its easiest type, portability would possibly contain placing a cobot on a dolly and bringing it to the subsequent welding cell. Whereas rotary positioners may help, this doesn’t resolve the problem of coping with very massive assemblies. This was one of many challenges confronted by an Ontario, Canada-based producer of heavy earth-moving tools for harsh mining environments. To allow MIG welding on large 15-ton workpieces, the corporate developed a customized skid that may be moved with a forklift to wherever the cobot is required. The cobot then is mounted on a carry to create a seventh axis to succeed in your complete weld on the aspect of a truck physique. With this skid, a welder and robotic welder work aspect by aspect, leapfrogging throughout the fillet-welded ribs on the aspect of the truck physique, doubling the output.
Cellular cart-based welding cobot options have entered the market lately to use portability. In a single instance, a New Mexico-based agricultural tools producer has been utilizing a cellular cart-based cobot to automate repetitive welds on bigger components within the fab store. The producer found that for big components, it’s a lot simpler to carry the cobot to the weld than it’s to maneuver the half round. The result’s a stage of portability that simply isn’t attainable with conventional robotic welding methods.
One other strategy—one which creates much more new robotic welding alternatives—is to mount a welding cobot on movable magnetic rails. The cobot can “crawl” alongside gigantic flat or curved workpieces performing welds, liberating employees from a whole lot of stress within the course of. Don’t be deceived by a cobot’s small type issue and portability—these methods may even deal with heavy-duty multipass jobs on massive weldments.
Historically, in high-budget manufacturing, these purposes had been solved with using massive rotary positioners, lengthy rails, or expansive gantries with conventional robots. However many fabricators have neither the ability set nor the out there capital to afford these options. These fabricators have been ignored of automation till now.
In an arguably excessive instance of portability, cobots may even be magnetically mounted to any steel floor, enabling welding automation in the kind of cramped and awkward places that when required guide welding by default.
This functionality is being leveraged by some within the shipbuilding and development sectors. Shipbuilding requires in depth inside-block welding on all of the ships’ inner rooms and cubby holes—a job that till now has needed to be carried out manually. And in development, the power to carry the simple-to-program cobot to the work has saved a Swedish bucket restore firm 30% on its working time, giving it the chance to tackle extra complicated welding assignments.
Cellular cobot welding machines present flexibility and portability in high-mix heavy fab retailers.
Know Your Cobots
There’s little level to having a welding cobot if it’s a nightmare to program. When deciding on a welding cobot, fabricators ought to search for methods that rating excessive on usability; a talented welder ought to be capable of discover ways to program easy welding in lower than a day. Search for intuitive interfaces and cobot firms that present on-line coaching and certification to carry customers up to the mark on how one can function the robotic.
And to future-proof the funding, fabricators ought to select a confirmed cobot from a good producer. These firms have created welding-oriented instruments and programming interfaces so fabricators don’t must waste time within the design and deployment section.
Finally, irrespective of which stage of cobot portability a steel fabricator embraces, bringing the cobot to the work is about making individuals extra productive, making certain higher high quality of the tip product, and enhancing the well-being of welders.
New, progressive methods to deploy welding cobots embody a cobot positioned on a carriage that runs on a versatile rail system fastened to the substrate. It focuses on butt-weld connections and multipass welding, whatever the form or orientation.
