Robotic Welding Overview

Robotic welding is used when an industry wants to animate their welding process. You may know about this type of welding because it is often used on assembly line work, especially in the automotive industry.

Robots are used to handle the parts that need to be welded and to perform the weld. Robots are generally used when you want to do resistance spot welding or arc welding where there is a need for high production.

Although robotic welding is fairly new, they were started in about the 1980s when the automotive industry found that they could use robots to do spot welding. As of 2005, there were over 60,000 robots being used in many industries in North America for welding.

Robotic welding can be relatively expensive to do so it can be difficult for some industries to bring in more equipment. Many robots are being "employed" to also do arch welding and they have two parts: the manipulator that is how the robot is able to move, and the controller which is the "brain" of the operation and actually performs the weld.

They can also optimize welds because of a process known as signature image processing in which data can be collected from the robots in real time, analyzed and then used to create better welding systems.

Types of Robots: There are basically two types of industrial robots:

Rectilinear robots move in a boxed shape along three axes. They are the ones that may be most common in looks because they have a "wrist" at the end of their movement arm so they can move the arm in a rotation.

The articulating robot is the second type of robot and it moves in irregular shapes. They have both arms and joints that rotate. In this process the arm moves similarly to the way a human arm works and they also have the "wrist" that rotates at the end of the arm.

When setting up a robotic aspect of welding it is important to realize that this is not the same as doing welding manual. Many things have to be taken into consideration around reliability, the number of axes you need and the space where the robots will be installed.

On the human side of this you will have to make sure that there is someone there to check the welds, someone to do maintenance and seam tracking programs should be in place.

Robotics has advantages and disadvantages. As an example, many manufacturers use robots to do the monotonous tasks that are difficult for humans to continue to perform overtime. However, robots will need recalibration, reprogramming and regular maintenance. People need to be in place to take care of these needs.

You will also have to make sure that the robots you choose have the right amount of motions to do the job well. You may also have to consider having a backup system of robots in case something goes wrong.

Although robotics seems to be an interesting and exciting way to do welding it is something that needs to be well researched and organized before going to the expense.