How To Perform Preventative Maintenance on a Welding Robot

Conducting proper maintenance on a welding robot will help to extend its overall life span. Maintenance on automation systems also ensures that there will be less downtime for your system. Some good maintenance items are to check for worn cables, check the welding gun tips and nozzles, and replace the welding liner weekly.

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Robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy has been a bless­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ing for over 40 years. By using robot sys­tems and work cells, indus­tries like the auto­mo­tive indus­try are able to build vehi­cles more effi­cient­ly than ever before. What once would have tak­en a man­u­al oper­a­tors an entire day to per­form can now be com­plet­ed in a frac­tion of a shift. This amount of uptime makes pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance vital to the func­tion­al­i­ty of the robot.

Since these robots are designed to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at full speed, they are engi­neered to require min­i­mal main­te­nance. This decreas­es the amount of down­time nec­es­sary to per­form main­te­nance. Also, there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that a robot can have too much main­te­nance per­formed, which will cause the robot to be over-greased. Adher­ing to a pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance sched­ule is just as impor­tant to the oper­a­tion of your weld­ing robot sys­tem as mak­ing sure that you use the prop­er grease. Plus, by con­tin­u­ing sched­uled pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance can great­ly improve the up-time and the per­for­mance of a robot­ic weld­ing system.

There are a few sim­ple steps you should check when run­ning through the pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance schedule:

Replace weld­ing lin­er week­ly — With a weld­ing robot, the most com­mon wear hap­pens in the weld­ing lin­er. If your com­pa­ny is run­ning your robot three shifts, the weld­ing lin­er should be changed week­ly to elim­i­nate defects dur­ing operation.

Check for worn cables - Watch the robot run through the appli­ca­tion and make note of any cables that are drag­ging, rub­bing, touch­ing clamps, or any mov­ing along any oth­er part of the weld­ing cell or sys­tem. These could become cost­ly prob­lem areas for cable main­te­nance if not fixed. Worn cables should be replaced, and cables should be secured to cut down on excess wear and tear.

Check weld­ing gun tips and noz­zles – Weld­ing gun tips should be replaced dai­ly, and the noz­zle should be checked for weld spat­ter that could buildup and cut down on weld­ing func­tion­al­i­ty. Plus, a fresh con­tact tip on a weld­ing torch will help to cor­rect defects that may com­mon­ly occur dur­ing the weld­ing process. You can also use soap bub­bles to check for any shield­ing gas leaks in your system.

Over­all, pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance per­for­mance is a vital part of own­ing and oper­at­ing an indus­tri­al robot sys­tem or work cell, and a good main­te­nance sched­ule will ensure that your robot will last for many years.

For more infor­ma­tion on robot­ic automa­tion or pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, call Robots​.com today online or at 8777626881.

Oct 29, 2015