Creative Welding Ideas

When it comes to join­ing and adher­ing parts togeth­er, man­u­fac­tur­ers often have the choice of sev­er­al weld­ing meth­ods. Some­times, man­u­fac­tur­ers have to come up with cre­ative weld­ing ideas. MIG, TIG, plas­ma, cold, and plas­tic weld­ing are sev­er­al cre­ative weld­ing tech­niques that are employed in today’s manufacturing.

MIG Weld­ing: MIG weld­ing, also called gas met­al arc weld­ing (GMAW), is a very com­mon form of weld­ing. An arc is formed between a con­sum­able wire elec­trode and the met­al work piece. Elec­tric­i­ty is used to melt the con­sum­able wire and the met­al parts togeth­er, form­ing one sol­id part. Indus­tri­al robot arms very com­mon­ly per­form MIG weld­ing with the help of acces­sories such as wire feed­ers and torch clean­ing stations.

TIG Weld­ing: TIG weld­ing, also known as gas tung­sten arc weld­ing (GTAW), is sim­i­lar to MIG weld­ing in that it uses elec­tric­i­ty and an elec­trode to pro­duce the weld. The dif­fer­ence comes from the type of elec­trode and process. The elec­trode used in TIG weld­ing is non-con­sum­able and is made of tung­sten. A shield­ing gas sur­rounds the elec­trode to pro­tect it from con­t­a­m­i­nants dur­ing the weld­ing process. TIG weld­ing is often used to weld thin stain­less steel or oth­er non-fer­rous met­als. Because of its dif­fi­cul­ty to com­plete man­u­al­ly, an indus­tri­al robot arm is often used to auto­mate TIG welding.

Plas­ma Weld­ing: Plas­ma weld­ing is an improve­ment over tra­di­tion­al TIG weld­ing. Using the same prin­ci­ples and many of the same com­po­nents, plas­ma weld­ing uses a cop­per noz­zle. Like TIG weld­ing, plas­ma weld­ing is often auto­mat­ed through the use of indus­tri­al robot arms because of the dif­fi­cult­ly in mas­ter­ing the skill.

Cold Weld­ing: Cold weld­ing uses no elec­tric­i­ty to join met­al parts. Instead of using molten met­al and wire, two flat sur­faces of sim­i­lar met­als will attract to each oth­er strong­ly in vac­u­um con­di­tions. Cold weld­ing can be seen in micro­scop­ic elec­tron­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing. This type of weld­ing is most effec­tive on gold nanowires on the micro­scop­ic level.

Plas­tic Weld­ing: Plas­tic weld­ing uses the same gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of oth­er ​“hot” weld­ing meth­ods. The dif­fer­ence is that the parts being weld­ed are plas­tic, not met­al. Because of this, very hot air is direct­ed at the parts to melt them and adhere them together.

Indus­tri­al robot arms are com­mon­ly used in the first three types of weld­ing. These three weld­ing meth­ods are also known as arc weld­ing. Fanuc, Motoman, and KUKA all design and man­u­fac­ture indus­tri­al robot arms to auto­mate all three arc weld­ing appli­ca­tions. Fanuc’s ARC Mate series, Motoman’s EA series, and KUKA’s low pay­load series are all designed to han­dle arc weld­ing dress pack­ages. These robot arms can be pro­grammed to pro­vide cre­ative weld­ing solu­tions and pro­vide extreme pre­ci­sion and quality.

To learn more about arc weld­ing solu­tions and cre­ative weld­ing solu­tions, con­tact Robots​.com at 877−762−6881 or reach rep­re­sen­ta­tives online.