Developing in house robotic welding skills within your fabrication business

System Design - Your first robot welding system

To ensure that the design of your initial robotic welding system provides the optimal return on investment, good inhouse programming skills are required by your personnel to quickly adapt to new products & changing production requirements.

With good training your personnel will quickly become competent & confident programmers & learn from experienced systems integrators how to efficiently program the robot welding system & develop in house product jigging techniques.

Often we are asked "what skills do we need in our personnel to program the robot welding system?". The answer is no different to learning any new skill - they need to be "keen to learn".

Of course an understanding of good welding practices should be understood. We have found that apprentices in their early fabrication years make excellent students through their familiarity in the intuitive programming technology & their keen-ness to further develop their skills with the new generation of Automatic Robot Programming software & advanced searching techniques often required in Australia's high product mix environment.

So for your first robot welding system, lets focus on automating the welding of your small to medium fabrications in a single station robot welding cell. The cell simplicity of a single station system minimises investment & maximises technology while providing the tools to automate a significant proportion of your welding needs, all while providing the training platform for your personnel to learn how to program robot welding systems, manufacture in house production jigs & to bring your welding into automatic production.

Guides to cost & timeframes for your first robot welding system;

• Cost for dedicated fully integrated robot welding system cell within guarding to Australian Standards including jig table & "Ready to weld"  - with only product jigs required to start production = AUD $120,000 + GST
• Training on site to develop your personnel to become confident robot welding system programmers for small to medium products that are suitable to be jigged in place = 3 to 4 days

Progressing to more flexible robot welding systems that are enabled to position larger and more complex fabrications & can locate fabrications that may have variable component positional repeatability.

Ensuring that the fabrication is orientated to the optimal welding position requires integrated axes to move the product into position prior to and during welding. These additional axes may extend the reach of the robot by linear tracks, and/or orientate the fabrication during welding with rotating single & multi axes positioners.

Searching technologies that locate the position of the fabrications through standard touch sensing techniques or seam location by laser sensors are well established.  

Assess your fabrication dimensions & weights to enable the robot welding system to be designed. Well established systems integrators provide standard robot welding cells with the ability to ensure through simulations that all aspects of your fabrication can be welded with the torch in the optimal position.

System Design - Your first robot welding system

To ensure that the design of your initial robotic welding system provides the optimal return on investment, good inhouse programming skills are required by your personnel to quickly adapt to new products & changing production requirements.

With good training your personnel will quickly become competent & confident programmers & learn from experienced systems integrators how to efficiently program the robot welding system & develop in house product jigging techniques.

Often we are asked "what skills do we need in our personnel to program the robot welding system?". The answer is no different to learning any new skill - they need to be "keen to learn".

Of course an understanding of good welding practices should be understood. We have found that apprentices in their early fabrication years make excellent students through their familiarity in the intuitive programming technology & their keen-ness to further develop their skills with the new generation of Automatic Robot Programming software & advanced searching techniques often required in Australia's high product mix environment.

So for your first robot welding system, lets focus on automating the welding of your small to medium fabrications in a single station robot welding cell. The cell simplicity of a single station system minimises investment & maximises technology while providing the tools to automate a significant proportion of your welding needs, all while providing the training platform for your personnel to learn how to program robot welding systems, manufacture in house production jigs & to bring your welding into automatic production.

Guides to cost & training for your first robot welding system;

• Cost for dedicated fully integrated robot welding system cell within guarding to Australian Standards including jig table & "Ready to weld"  - with only product jigs required to start production = AUD $120,000 + GST
• Training on site to develop your personnel to become  confident robot welding system programmers for small to medium products that are suitable to be jigged in place = 3 days

Progressing to more flexible robot welding systems that are enabled to position larger and more complex fabrications & can locate  fabrications that may vary in location or may vary in individual component dimensions.

Ensuring that the fabrication is orientated to the optimal welding position requires integrated axes to move the product into position prior to and during welding. These axes may extend the reach of the robot, and/or orientate the fabrication during welding.

Searching technologies that locate the position of the fabrications through standard touch sensing techniques or seam location by laser sensors are well established.  

Guides to cost & training to robotically weld your mid sized fabrications;

• Cost for dedicated fully integrated robot welding system cell with ability to orientate the fabrications with a dual axes positioner,  within guarding to Australian Standards. including jig table & "Ready to weld", including advanced touch sensing controls & programming  - with only product jigs required to start production = AUD $230,000 + GST
• Training on site to develop your personnel to add Touch Sensing Programming & Multi Axes Positioner coordination to confidently program more complex fabrications with variable positional accuracies = 2 days

With your inhouse programming and production capabilities progressing to robotically welding small through to mid sizes complex fabrications, the goal of automating the welding of your larger fabrications such as construction, mining, chassis & other large fabrications can be achieved.

The  programming skills within your personnel can now be utilised to weld your larger fabrications in dedicated robot welding systems. These standard Track systems have extended robot reach measured in 10's of metres & multi axis positioners with payload rating in 10's of thousands of kilograms.

The confidence of your personnel in the knowledge of successfully programming various robot welding systems to sub assembly stages enables the transition to confidently program your large fabrications. 

To ensure that these larger robot welding systems are fully utilised the operators are up skilled to program the robot welding systems "Off Line", meaning that they are incorporating the 3D models of your fabrications into the computer simulation to fully program the robot welding system. 

Utilising the current generation of Automatic Robot Programming software to further reduce the programming time & complexity is an exciting development that is a true game changer for the robot welding industry.

Guides to cost & training to robotically weld your large fabrications such as chassis & construction equipment;

• Cost for dedicated fully integrated multi station robot welding Track system cell with ability to orientate the fabrications with high payload positioners,  within guarding to Australian Standards. including master jigs & "Ready to weld", including advanced touch sensing controls, Off Line  & Automatic Robot Programming = AUD $900,000 + GST
• Training on site to develop your personnel to add Off Line & Automatic Robot Programming to confidently program large fabrications = 4 days. This training is normally conducted at the time of the full Factory Acceptance Testing of the system prior to shipping.

With experience in robotic welding systems in Australian, New Zealand, Japanese & American factories since 1987 we are available to assist you in the correct path to successfully incorporate robot welding systems within your fabrication business.

Orion Automation Systems Pty Ltd - 100 % Robot Welding