Ultimate Guide To Cobot Welding: How To Maximize Your Productivity

With the data predicting a possible welding shortage of 330,000 welders by 2028, cobot welding technology has emerged at the right time. When done right, welding can be the most impactful cobot application for improving your productivity and weld quality.

This guide will teach you everything about cobot welding. How it works, its applications and benefits, and why the welding process matters the most in cobot automation.

What Is Cobot Welding?

Cobot welding is an automation method that uses a collaborative robot to automate various welding processes. A collaborative robot can automate MIG, flux-cored, TIG, spot, and laser beam welding processes.

Cobot Welding Vs. Traditional Robotic Welding

Okay, you may be wondering what’s so different about welding with cobots compared to standard robots. After all, traditional robots have been around for decades… So, why consider cobots?

Essentially, collaborative robots (cobots) work alongside the operator by extending their output and abilities. It’s like giving your staff their own personal assistants that repeatedly do precisely as set. Unlike traditional robotics, cobots are much easier to program. With the right cobot system, your staff will be able to program a weld in just a few minutes.

Traditional robots are more suited for high-volume, serial production. Cobots are best used for high-mix, low-volume welding. Likewise, cobots are safe for your welders and other staff; they have safety systems to stop movement in case of human contact. On the other hand, traditional robots can cause significant injury due to fast motion and heavy robotic arms.

Collaborative Robot Welding Vs. Traditional Robotic Welding

Applications Best Suited For Cobot Welding

You will benefit the most from delegating repetitive high-mix, low-volume welding tasks to cobots. However, cobot welding can also be used for high-precision welding even if it’s a singular workpiece.

Cobots can weld all materials humans can—carbon and stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, magnesium, you name it. If you can weld it, so can a cobot, and probably better. Cobots are particularly beneficial for sensitive materials like stainless steel. Since they have absolute control over the welding speed, you can adjust everything to match the material’s heat input and travel speed needs.

Some of the most prominent industries for cobot welding are:

• Sheet metal manufacturing
• HVAC
• Aerospace
• Shipbuilding
• Transportation
• Food and beverage
• Custom and OEM part production
• Energy

Cobot Welding Benefits

Introducing the right cobot system can significantly improve your business. Cobots offer a perfect mix of automation, low-effort programming, small footprint, and accessibility. If traditional robotics aren’t suited for your fabrication, cobots are likely to be a perfect fit.

• Solves skilled labor shortage by amplifying your existing welders’ output.
• Improves weld quality and consistency.
• Reduces costs.
• Eliminates or reduces rework and scrap.
• Improves accuracy.
• Helps with customer satisfaction.
• Improves employee morale and helps retain skilled labor.
• Reduces the need for highly skilled welders.
• Improves the ability to scale and capture a wider market.
• Scales your talent.
• Makes welding safer for everyone involved.

With a cobot matching your production needs, your staff will be less fatigued, more productive, and have a safer environment while simultaneously boosting the weld quality. Cobots are hands-down the most disruptive technology that ever entered the welding industry.

How To Program a Welding Cobot

Creating a weld program for a cobot is as simple as manually guiding the cobot arm and making a few adjustments in the teach pendant. However, depending on the cobot brand, the process can be more complex.

Let’s take a look at an example of programming a straight fillet weld with the Laser Welding Cobot System:

1. Position the cobot arm manually to bring the tip of the laser gun to the start of the weld.
2. Record the position in the teach pendant.
3. Move the cobot arm to the end of the fillet weld.
4. Again record in the teach pendant.
5. Choose the appropriate pre-set laser weld parameter setup for the material and thickness or adjust it to your liking.
6. Done. The cobot will now repeat the process part after part.

The no-code programming of the Laser Welding Cobot System ensures the cobot is a tool all your employees can use. You wouldn’t want your angle grinder to require knowing C# or Python? Or to jump through hoops and endless menus to get it to work. Well, the same goes for cobots. They are supposed to be tools, not be so specialized you need significant experience to use them.

Components of a Cobot Welding System

A cobot welding system consists of multiple parts. The cobot arm is the main component, but other parts are of equal importance, especially the welding power source. While critical, cobot can be only as helpful as other system parts allow it.

Jigs and fixtures are critical for effective cobot welding. Your parts should be positioned the same every time for the cobot to produce parts with consistent quality. Sometimes, it can be beneficial to make custom jigs and tooling for fixturing.

Depending on the welding system, your cobot setup may have various parts. Let’s now examine the Laser Welding Cobot System and its components:

• The UR10e cobot arm.
• The IPG LightWeld laser welding power source with a laser gun and all of the necessary accessories.
• Work table with modular fixtures and clamps.
• Workcell enclosure with an interlock system for laser welding safety.
• Teach pendant with the no-code UR Cap software for weld programming.
• Laser welding safety glasses and the welding helmet for observing the welding process.

Cobot Welding Safety

Welding cobots can’t harm the operator through physical contact, unlike traditional robots. However, you still must conduct a thorough risk assessment and consider all possible safety hazards.

The ISO 10218-1 and the ISO 15066 safety standards are used for robotic applications. However, ISO 15066 is specifically designed for cobots and can give you guidance for conducting the risk assessment of collaborative robot applications.

OSHA Technical Manual Section IV: Chapter 4 provides information regarding industrial and collaborative robot hazards and safety. It can help when conducting the risk assessment for mechanical, electrical, impact, and other hazards.

Depending on the welding process, you might need additional safety measures. For example, the Laser Welding Cobot System includes a specialized enclosure to prevent laser exposure to other employees. Hazard prevention systems must be considered when evaluating any cobot solution, especially from the investment perspective. Other laser welding cobots may not include the enclosure or the interlock mechanisms, while these are critical to meet safety standards.

Calculating the Cobot Welding ROI

The Laser Welding Cobot System ROI period can vary significantly, often ranging from 18 to 24 months. Production factors like the part size and complexity affect the ROI. Your primary industries, work hours, and how often you use the cobot will also affect the ROI period.

Investing in a cobot requires covering fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs include the hardware, like the cobot arm, power source, safety enclosures, and other physical assets. Variable costs account for the downtime during the cobot installation, maintenance, training, consumables, and operational expenses for the cobot. Some cobot systems, like the Laser Welding Cobot System, minimize the variable costs with swift installation and exceptionally fast programming. So, you spend less time with part programming and more time welding with a cobot.

To calculate your cobot welding ROI, consider the total cobot welder price and the approximate annual labor cost savings and scrap and rework reduction. However, this is only the baseline. Intangible benefits like eliminating the backlog, taking on more work, and improving customer satisfaction and employee well-being can significantly improve the actual ROI.

Why The Welding Process Matters With Cobot Automation

Perhaps the least discussed factor in the industry when it comes to cobot effectiveness is the welding process selection. Since most cobot welders in the market use arc welding, it has kind of become the norm. But that is also a perfect opportunity to find a better edge in the market.

For sheet metal and thin gauges, laser welding beats MIG and TIG across the board. Laser welding strength matches or is higher than MIG/TIG. So automating laser welding with a cobot can give you a significant advantage over other shops that are also looking at cobots.

Read more in our in-depth laser vs TIG welding comparison.

If you’ve been to FABTECH or other manufacturing/tech events recently, you’ve probably noticed that cobots are everywhere. And if you use Instagram or other social media, you are probably bombarded with cobot welding ads. Everyone knows about cobots by now, so they won’t forever be the advantage they are today.

However, if you stay on the leading edge of welding tech, you can have an advantage over traditional automated processes. When others use MIG to weld sheet metal, you can use a laser cobot to do the job faster, with less post processing, and with a higher weld quality. Choosing the right welding process for your application may give you a better ROI now and in the future.

Besides higher speed and quality, handheld laser welding on its own is significantly easier than MIG or TIG. If you tried to weld with a laser welder for the first time today, you’d make an exceptional weld in less than 20 minutes of training, even if you never welded before. Automating the process with a cobot makes running the system even easier for the operators, reducing the need for highly skilled welders, which are in short supply.

Of course, if you weld thick materials like 3/8″ and above, MIG is still a better option.

Laser Welding Cobot System

The Laser Welding Cobot System lets you maximize the welding potential of automated systems by using the most productive and versatile welding process—fiber laser welding. It uses a no-code programming system your fabricators can use to automate laser welding with minimal effort.

The Quality Tooling and Repair (QTR) case study is a prime example of how automating the most effective welding process can skyrocket results over traditional manual welding methods. The QTR needed 90 minutes to weld a single part with manual TIG. Once QTR switched to the Laser Welding Cobot System, they reduced their cycle time to 10 minutes, gaining a 9X productivity boost!

Ready For Laser Cobot Welding?

Download our ebook to learn more about the benefits of laser welding or schedule a demo with our team. We can show you firsthand just how easy it is to program a laser weld with the Laser Welding Cobot System and help you decide if this approach can work for your parts.

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