Rooted in the first line of [welding], sparks and lightning all the way

Welding, a battleground for soldiers

Industrial robot is a kind of robot, which can imitate human operation, automatic repetitive programming, control, etc. to complete various mechatronics cycle operations. At the same time, it is also widely used in modern manufacturing automation equipment, which plays an important role in steadily improving the quality and production efficiency of automated products and saving labor. With the rapid development of the national economy and robot technology, robots have become more and more important in the process of industrialization in China.

There are many types of industrial robots, among which the most widely used is welding robots. The International Federation of Robotics has shown that more than half of the world's robots are welding robots. As the name suggests, the welding robot is a mechanical equipment that does not require human participation in the welding process and automatically welds the workpiece, which can be used to replace traditional welding, and can achieve stable welding in the welding process, improve the speed of the welding production line, and have a variety of science and technology to improve the automation and intelligence level of welding operations.

As a new force in the industrial robot industry, collaborative robots have been widely used in handling and spraying, and collaborative robots must develop to welding and grinding to become the main force of industry. Welding, as a basic industry, is also the most demanded application, and it has become an inevitable trend for major collaborative robot manufacturers to get involved in the field of welding.

The solution is subtle

Since its establishment in 2018, Elite Robotics has actively responded to the needs of users for welding applications, and has been widely adapted to various brands of welding machines (including MEGMEET, Fronius, KEMPPI, AOTAI, ewim and other internationally renowned welding equipment manufacturers), and continues to provide customers with practical collaborative robot welding solutions.

Just like Elite's customers in the metalworking industry in South China, most of the customers had their welding work done manually before introducing cobots. Welding work is extremely labor-intensive, the younger generation of workers can not accept the harsh working environment, and the older generation of workers can not bear the increasing intensity of work. At the same time, welding work is a technical position with thresholds, so the customer's demand for welding work robot replacement is very urgent.

▲ Elite EC612 collaborative robot integrates 3D vision and welding torch at the end for steel plate welding applications

Due to the layout of the workshop and the cost, the customer first ruled out the use of traditional industrial robots, and then turned their attention to collaborative robots. Finally, Elite recommended EC612 collaborative robot for customers, and also gave full play to the advantages of ecological cooperation in welding applications, integrating 3D vision cameras at the end of the robot, and the vision system automatically generated welding tracks to guide the robot to carry out steel plate welding tasks.

Rooted in the first line of [welding], sparks and lightning all the way

Elite welding collaborative robot completes the welding work through teaching programming, the teaching programming is completed gradually, the staff sets the key points of the weld trajectory and the welding parameters in the teaching pendant, the welding parameters mainly include welding current, welding voltage, welding speed, wire feeding speed, welding torch posture, swing amplitude, etc., the welding collaborative robot can remember the operator's operation, and automatically generate a program that continuously performs the operation. The solution finally completed the welding task in nearly 4 minutes, and the welding quality was far better than that of many old welders, which won the praise of customers and truly achieved robot substitution!

Advantages, Elite welding process package

Cobots have a natural advantage in the field of welding. This is due to the inherent product characteristics of cobots – safe, easy to use, flexible and efficient. At the same time, the welding process package developed by Elite can provide practical application solutions for most welding applications on the market. In fact, the advantages of Elite collaborative robots in the welding process can be summarized as follows:

First, Elite cobots do not need safety fences, occupy a small space, have rich interfaces, are lightweight, easy to integrate, and are very convenient and fast to deploy.

▲ Elite EC63 collaborative robot end integrated welding torch can be used for fish scale welding applications

Second, with the development of industry, the demand for product customization has gradually increased, for some single-station welding stations, for small, multi-SKU, and small-batch welding demand has gradually expanded, compared with traditional industrial robots, Elite collaborative robot itself is more competent for flexible production mode, it can preset programs, when the product batch is replaced, quickly call the new program and debug the robot can be put into new tasks, helping users greatly shorten the changeover time.

▲ Elite EC66 collaborative robot terminal integrated welding torch for gas shielding welding applications

Thirdly, whether it is based on the force control of the current model or with the end force sensor, the Elite collaborative robot can realize free drag or even determine the drag of some specific degrees of freedom (lock shaft dragging), which greatly reduces the difficulty of teaching, can more effectively solve the problems of difficult programming and long teaching time for customers, actively lower the threshold of automation, help customers achieve gradual automation, and lay a solid foundation for moving towards full automation.

Looking ahead, a breakthrough is just around the corner

At present, Elite has taken the lead in making a breakthrough in thin plate welding (laser welding), and also has mature application cases in gas shielded welding. In general, welding as a basic process, there are bound to be many requirements, and the consistency of the product and the specifications of the product will determine the welding requirements. For example, processes such as weld seam tracking and multi-pass thick plate welding are currently imperfect and yet to be developed by collaborative robots.

In addition, in the past, most collaborative robots used integrated controllers for driving and control in order to be convenient, which made it impossible to meet the needs of real-time welding linkage (multi-axis expansion). The application of collaborative robots in welding can solve the programming problems due to multiple varieties and solve some customer pain points to a certain extent, but if collaborative robots want to become an indispensable product in the welding process, then we also need to promote the development of products and solutions from the breakthrough in the field of welding segmentation. I believe that in the continuous implementation of real cases, Elite will accumulate more practical application experience, and this breakthrough is just around the corner!

Rooted in the first line of [welding], sparks and lightning all the way

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