Arc Mate – Robots Have Made it Possible to Weld with More Accuracy and Repeatability

 

Welding requires a steady hand, focus and attention to detail. Welders or Boilermakers are in high demand as Australian companies in every industry scale up, export more or re-shore their manufacturing. Production welding can be a difficult job – demanding hours of repetitive motion, sometimes awkward ergonomic positioning and high levels of concentration. 

Welding requires a steady hand, focus and attention to detail. Welders or Boilermakers are in high demand as Australian companies in every industry scale up, export more or re-shore their manufacturing. Production welding can be a difficult job – demanding hours of repetitive motion, sometimes awkward ergonomic positioning and high levels of concentration. 

Having a Fanuc ARCMate welding robot is like having your best welder on the job, all day, every day. By automating your welding process, you can expect high quality welds, completed at a consistent production rate all while reducing the OH&S risk to your business. By employing a welding robot on the shop floor, your highly skilled welders are now available for those more precise or intricate jobs, requiring the human eye, dexterity and years of welding experience. 

Robotic welding technology has significantly improved in recent time thanks to smart and high-speed communication with the welding power source and wire feeder. Gone are the days of misplaced welds, limited part access and difficult programming. 

‘Having a Fanuc ARCMate welding robot is like having your best welder on the job, all day, every day’

Robots are extremely good at doing what they are told – but what happens when a joint doesn’t fit quiet as well as it once did? Or the fixture isn’t holding the parts as perfectly as it could? This used to be the Achilles heel of welding robots! To overcome this issue, Fanuc ARCmate MIG welding robots feature two distinct technologies 1. Touch Sensing and 2. Through Arc Seam Tracking.

The robot is able to detect and offset its taught positions by utilising a Touch Sense function. When performing the Touch Sensing function, the robot and weld power source work together, the welder applies a low voltage to the weld wire and waits for contact to be made with the part or fixture as the robot moves towards the direction of the part. Once contact is made, the position data is saved to the robot and the deviation to the taught position is calculated automatically by the robots software. This deviation is then used to shift or offset the robots weld path to ensure an accurately placed weld. 

The touch sensing function is able to detect and account for displacements and rotations in all six axis. Meaning it can find a part that has shifted in any direction and rotated in any direction. This powerful feature is able to find the position of Fillet welds, V-Groove Butt welds as well as inside and outside diameters of circular items such as sockets or bosses.

A Similar function can also be achieved with an external laser sensor if the application demands it. 

Through Arc Seam Tracking (or TAST for short) enables the robot to modify its taught weld path on-the-fly, accurately following a weld path that may deviate in position due to imperfect joint fitment or distortion in the part. TAST is a feature that must be supported by the weld power source and coupled with the Fanuc TAST software feature. 

During welding, the robot is commanded to weave in a Sine wave motion, during this weaving the welder is constantly monitoring the change in welding current and reporting the deviation from nominal back to the robot. Using this information, the robot then dynamically modifies its taught path to keep the deviation in welding current to a minimum. This feature is able to accommodate major deviations of the part, sometimes as much as 20mm or more.   

Automated Solutions Australia (ASA) are able to integrate a range of FANUC welding robots. FANUC robots provide the industry with the largest selection of industrial robots and collaborative or cobots for arc, spot and laser welding. FANUC have welding robots for every task size, reach, and payload to meet your individual requirements. 

Fanuc ARCMate welding robots are specifically designed for a variety of industrial welding applications, including MIG and TIG welding as well as laser and spot welding. They can even be deployed for laser and plasma cutting. Different versions are available to fulfil a range of needs, and they all have a number of accessories to enhance their flexibility, including automatic torch neck changers as well as a multitude of external part positioning systems including 7th axis linear rails, rotary stages and 2-axis positioners. The FANUC ARC Mate series of welding robots ranges in payload capacity from 7 kg to 25 kg and in reach from 911 mm to 3123 mm.

The collaborative Arc welding robots or cobots, include the brand-new FANUC CRX and come with FANUC’s tried-and-true, user-friendly ARC Tool Software, which is intended to increase your profitability by decreasing programming time. The simple-to-program interface enables basic applications, but also gives you access to FANUC’s sophisticated capabilities, including Weaving, Seam Tracking/TAST and Multi-pass. The Fanuc CRX robot is capable of hand guided teaching, which significantly reduces programming time as well as making smaller volume production robot welding more economic. 

Automated Solutions Australia are capable of supplying and integrating all popular welding brands to meet your shops standards. Major brands supported are Lincoln Electric, Kemppi, Fronius and Abicor Binzel.

Whether you are a large or small manufacturer, if you are looking at welding robots for your manufacturing process, we invite you to contact the experts at Automated Solutions Australia to discuss your application and explore the FANUC range today on 1800 ROBOTS.