Building an Effective Welding Cell: A How-To Guide

When incor­po­rat­ing a robot­ic weld­ing cell to fit your man­u­fac­tur­ing needs, there are some key require­ments to consider.

While most robot­ic weld cells have an indus­tri­al robot arm, a posi­tion­er and a safe­ty pack­age, it is your unique needs that will deter­mine how these pieces come togeth­er and how the cell lay­out will be designed.

The plan­ning of your robot­ic weld­ing work­cell requires many phas­es, includ­ing a com­put­er sim­u­la­tion and see­ing vir­tu­al results that trans­late into your real-time oper­a­tion, along with choos­ing the robot, the weld­ing pack­age, the size of the work­cell and the safe­ty equip­ment to meet your needs.

For exam­ple, if you are design­ing a cell to weld two sep­a­rate parts, you may choose a dual-sided turntable for your posi­tion­er. This will allow your robot to weld one type of part on side A, and anoth­er on side B. Or, you may want two sta­tion­ary tables, posi­tioned on either side of the robot.

Once you know what you’d like the robot to do, it is time to call an inte­gra­tor, like Robots​.com, to help you with your design. Robots​.com design­ers and tech­ni­cians will work with you to make sure that your work­cell meets your exact spec­i­fi­ca­tions and will work for your weld­ing needs.

The experts at Robots​.com will look at pic­tures and video of your avail­able space and pro­duc­tion process so they can begin to help you real­ize your plan for automa­tion.

After decid­ing which robot man­u­fac­tur­er to go with – for exam­ple, Fanuc, Motoman, or KUKA – and which mod­el is best suit­ed for your process, you will have to decide the size of the cell you need, which posi­tion­er is right for you, what safe­ty feautres are required and which weld­ing torch and dress pack­age is appro­pri­ate for your application.

Robots​.com will then have cre­ate a 3‑D sim­u­la­tion of your robot­ic weld­ing work­cell based on the space you have avail­able and the appli­ca­tion your cell needs to per­form. If the sim­u­la­tion shows that the cell will flow well, it is time to get a quote and build your weld­ing cell.

How­ev­er, robot­ic weld­ing is not the sil­ver bul­let for robot­ic weld­ing projects. Com­pa­nies need to devel­op infra­struc­ture to sup­port robot­ic appli­ca­tions, includ­ing under­stand­ing the process, under­stand­ing robot­ics, under­stand­ing main­te­nance and trou­bleshoot­ing and under­stand­ing the man­u­al process in com­bi­na­tion with the robotics.

If you have this infra­struc­ture in place, you com­plete your robot­ic weld cell design steps and you fin­ish the train­ing avail­able through Robots​.com on how to pro­gram and oper­ate your weld­ing cell, your shop should be suc­cess­ful in weld­ing cell automa­tion.

Ready to start design­ing your robot­ic weld cell with Robots​.com? Con­tact us today for more infor­ma­tion at 877−762−6881.