The Importance of Understanding your Swannecks

Swan­necks are an impor­tant ele­ment to pay atten­tion to in order to pro­vide opti­mal repeata­bil­i­ty and con­sis­tent prod­uct qual­i­ty to your pro­duc­tion line​.To bet­ter under­stand the dura­bil­i­ty of a robot­ic torch and swan­neck it is impor­tant to under­stand the weak and wear points, con­struc­tion, tip hold­ers and dif­fusers, mate­ri­als, and wire liners. 

Key­ing of the Swanneck

Two key­ways locat­ed on the front mod­ule of the robot torch has ram­i­fi­ca­tions to the torch neck’s repeatability.

For instance, if the soft key­way is on the front mod­ule of the robot torch then the integri­ty of the front mod­ule erodes the swan­necks dura­bil­i­ty, and the swan­neck will begin to lose its tool cen­ter point.

The hard key­ways cause rota­tion­al move­ment and wear in the neck and should ide­al­ly be built into the torch module.

Pic­ture Cred­it: The Defin­i­tive Guide to Robot­ic Weld­ing Torch­es by Abi­cor Binzel

Con­struc­tion

It is also impor­tant to under­stand the con­struc­tion of the swan­neck when choos­ing a robot torch. A sin­gle piece of con­struc­tion of the swan­neck is going to be stur­dier than swan­necks man­u­fac­tured from mul­ti­ple components. 

In order to have high­er up-time, through­put, and ROI, it is impor­tant that when you remove a swan­neck and replace it, you want to main­tain a true tool cen­ter point (TCP) and not have to con­tin­u­ous­ly touch up your robot to account for TCP variance.

Tip Hold­ers and Diffusers

Tip hold­ers are the inter­face between the swan­neck and the con­tact tip and are an impor­tant piece to under­stand. Torch mak­ers have dif­fer­ent ways to con­struct tip hold­ers and diffusers. 

Some use a sin­gle piece con­struc­tion by com­bin­ing the dif­fuser and the tip hold­er into a sin­gle com­po­nent. This offers bet­ter con­duc­tiv­i­ty in the piece and greater shield­ing gas cov­er­age than with two thread­ed pieces. Some pro­pose that because it is a sin­gle piece con­struc­tion of a long, cop­per mate­r­i­al there is an increase for bend­ing at the piece, caus­ing mis­align­ment of the con­tact tip, wire, and joint. How­ev­er, a short­er con­tact tip hold­er won’t expe­ri­ence these prob­lems because the bend-abil­i­ty is almost nonexistent. 

They also can make them into sep­a­rate pieces and man­u­fac­ture the gas dif­fuser as a sin­gle piece con­duc­tor tube.

The dif­fuser will per­form bet­ter in crash­es and help main­tain the Tool Cen­ter Point if there is a col­li­sion when it sits inside the swan­neck end and is sup­port­ed against the out­er tube of the swan­neck. If there are a larg­er num­ber of big bores then the dis­tri­b­u­tion and resis­tance to spat­ter will be higher. 

Mate­r­i­al Choices

Dif­fusers and tip hold­ers typ­i­cal­ly uti­lize brass or cop­per as their main build material. 

• Cop­per is a soft­er met­al; it wears quick­ly but it will achieve good con­duc­tiv­i­ty into the con­tact tip. 
• Brass will resist wear­ing as it is a hard­er met­al but there will be some sac­ri­fice in conductivity.

Even under­stand­ing the type of tip used in rela­tion to the dif­fuser is impor­tant. A con­tact tip made from sil­ver plate or pure elec­trolyte cop­per will pro­vide the most from a brass dif­fuser; how­ev­er, a con­tact tip made from cop­per zir­co­ni­um would be best used with a cop­per dif­fuser as the cur­rent will pro­vide a bet­ter trans­fer to the tip.

Wire Lin­ers

A typ­i­cal wire lin­er will start from the wire feed­er and go all the way up to the con­tact tip. There are two dif­fer­ent pop­u­lar lin­ers that are used: neck lin­ers and front load liners. 

• Neck lin­ers (also known as jump) are easy to use lin­ers that save time and mate­r­i­al cost in the replace­ment and main­te­nance of lin­ers. These lin­ers start at the torch body and trav­el all the way to the con­tact tip. Jump lin­ers are cost sav­ing mate­ri­als to have on hand because they pro­tect against a lin­ers’ weak­est point which is on the torch body itself. Jump lin­ers can be quick­ly switched enabling pro­duc­tion to continue.
• Front load lin­ers use mechan­i­cal springs that don’t always per­form prop­er­ly. They are easy to install so they do pro­vide con­ve­nience and time sav­ings, but it is impor­tant to make sure they are the right length and cor­rect­ly installed on the spring.

Lin­er Material

Lin­er mate­r­i­al is anoth­er impor­tant choice to make. These can be heli­cal ver­sus a flat design and steel or metal­lic ver­sus plas­tic in mate­r­i­al. Flat lin­ers are not as flexible. 

It is extreme­ly impor­tant to choose the right diam­e­ter as well; an over­sized lin­er can have too much area around your wire and cause bird nest­ing and mis-feed­ing. Ensure that the lin­er size is matched to the wire size for opti­mal results. 

Con­tact Robots​.com

As you can see, there is an abun­dance of infor­ma­tion avail­able on swan­necks, dif­fusers, and tip hold­ers. For any ques­tions or for more infor­ma­tion con­tact the experts at Robots​.com online or at 877−762−6881.

Source: https://​cdn2​.hub​spot​.net/​hubfs…