Cannot find enough welders? Could a collaborative robot welder help?

Here’s how you know if a collaborative robot could help with welding. If you:

• Have robot users without a lot of robot experience
• Have low-volume and high mix welding jobs
• Need quality metal processing equipment.

This is among advice offered by Mitch Dupon, application development engineering with Universal Robots, and speaker in an Oct. 15 Control Engineering and Plant Engineering webcast on robotic welding called “Collaborative robots are now skilled welders, what’s next?”

Certain welding applications, such as certified welding, pipe welding, and oil and gas shipping are not appropriate for robots, Dupon said.

Traditional robot welding is caged with the robots moving at maximums speeds, but with sub-assemblies, tooling often is expensive and inflexible. Robotic programmers need to have significant experience.

When collaborative robots weld

Collaborative robots can be applied to welding applications that:

• Have a small footprint
• Need fast tool-up for small batch runs
• Are easy to program, meaning programs can be created in less time than welding the parts would take
• Require benefits of traditional welding automation.

The Oct. 15, 2019, webcast has videos, photos, more details, robotic welding application discussion, a question and answer session and will be archived for a year for viewing. It covers obstacles and threats of labor shortages, cost overruns, and quality and reviews barriers of entry to robotic implementations, especially welding.

Mark T. Hoske is content manager, Control Engineering, CFE Media and Technology, mhoske@cfemedia.com.

KEYWORDS: Robotic welding, collaborative robots

Learn if a collaborative robot can help with your welding applications.

When a collaborative robot should not be used for welding.

Photos, videos and application examples explain collaborative robot welding.

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How can a collaborative robot help you with welding or other applications?

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For more on this topic, see related webcast: “Collaborative robots are now skilled welders, what’s next?”

Also see related collaborative robotic webcasts:

The ROI of Collaborative Robots

Plug-and-Play Peripherals for Collaborative Robots

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