Automating Welding Tasks in the Metal Processing Sector
Welding tasks can present a unique challenge for manufacturers as it is often necessary for one welding machine to handle a multitude of different materials in step. This was the case for a recent customer of ours at Melton Machine & Control Company.
Unfortunately, their existing manual welding process was struggling to keep up with output and quality demands. We stepped in to bring them an automated welding solution that reduced costs, optimized the quality of both product and system components, and reorganized their labor flow.
The Problem
Not only is manual welding a less versatile process than automated welding – a significant issue for a customer with so many different products like this manufacturer – but it also requires a skilled workforce that is becoming increasingly harder to supply.
Like many companies in the industry, the customer continually struggled to find welders in their location. The lack of skilled welding labor made it difficult for them to fill all 11 operator spots in the welding process and, as a result, reduced their output volume. This was the primary issue impeding their growth.
Additionally, the presence of other manual processes, such as the cutting process, caused a domino effect of delays. If a piece of raw material was out of spec due to complications in the cutting process, it would take extra steps in the welding process. For instance, if a piece of tubing was slightly long in size, a welder would take a large hammer and beat the part into the fixture to achieve a workable fit-up.
The Solution
When Melton stepped in, the customer’s welding process had become a detrimental bottleneck for their entire production line. We conducted a full assessment of their production line and agreed that automating the welding tasks was a viable solution.
However, the best path forward was a more holistic automation approach that would extend beyond the welding system. Our proposed sequence of operations started with the automatic presentation of all the tubes to a material-handling robot which would place each tube into a tacking fixture for welding. Then, an operator would place raw material pieces into the machine and clamp them into an exact location.
The machine would then present the raw material to a pair of tack welding robots that joined all the tubes but could not complete all the welds because the time to weld was too large. After the tacking process, a second material handling robot would transfer the tacked-up part assembly to a table where 6 welding robots would finish welding all parts together. A final material handling robot would pick up the completed assembly and place it into part racks, ready for transport to the painting process.
Implementation: A Step-by-Step Approach
When we were first approached by the customers for this automation project, our engineering team made several trips to the customer’s plant. We wanted to see the full scope of the problem and ask their team questions, including how their operations team would maintain a major robot installation. When we dug deeper into the problems they were experiencing in their welding process, we realized that the issues extended to labor struggles, the number of diverse products, and the additional manual tasks before and after welding, such as cutting and materials handling. Our final solution was a comprehensive automation system that addressed each of these pain points simultaneously. To achieve our proposed automated system, we first recommended shrinking the number of product varieties from over 60 to 10-12 variations.
This reduction made the design of the automated system more efficient. It also helped contain the cost of our standard machine functionality testing process in which we run all varieties of parts to be made on our shop floor before delivery. We also recommended that the customer could achieve higher quality products, reduce scrap, and optimize their new automated welding system if they could better control their raw materials, particularly in the cutting process. Our engineers devised that this could be accomplished by converting raw tubing and cutting the tubes with a robotic laser cut-off machine rather than buying pre-cut tubing. This higher quality tubing would be more tightly in spec and would eliminate the need for a hammer to beat the poor quality parts into the fixture – an action that would not work with a robotic machine.
Additionally, the fixture will last longer when it isn’t experiencing such brutal force multiple times per day. Finally, we decided the manual loading step involving the operator was necessary despite the automation of the rest of the assembly.
This function was recommended as manual because of the intricacy needed for this part fit-up and assembly task. Automating this fit-up would not be cost-prohibitive.
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Contact Melton Machine & Control Company Today
For this metal processing customer, our solution provided quite a success story. At Melton, we’d like to provide a reliable, efficient solution like this to your manufacturing environment. For more than 55 years, we’ve brought our custom automation solutions to diverse industries across the country. From engineering and designing to integrating and on-going support after delivery, we develop automated systems that work for you because they were made for you. Whatever your challenge, we have the knowledge, experience, and dedication to overcome it. Contact us today to schedule a free assessment of your production systems.
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