The use of industrial robots in CNC Manufacturing has been widespread for a long time now, but their use for welding in the field of mechanical processing is a relatively recent application of this technology.
Since the 1960s, for example, robots have been widely used in the automotive industry; but only during the 1980s the use of welding robots became widespread. However, these have quickly gained ground: already in 2005, about half of the more than 120,000 robots in North American industries were involved in welding and CNC Manufacturing.
robotized welding All the processes that involve the repetition of an operation on similar pieces can be automated; even in the case of welding, after being correctly programmed, the robot will perform exactly the same welding each time, with a repeated precision from piece to piece that would be difficult to achieve with manual processing.
From this derive the main advantages of the use of robots for welding: the increase in precision and productivity. In fact, waste and the need to rework parts have decreased; moreover, production also increases because, compared to manual labor, the automated one proceeds much faster and can continue uninterruptedly day and night.
Thanks to the use of robots in CNC Manufacturing, the risks for workers are also reduced, which would otherwise be exposed to direct and indirect risks (fumes, sparks) linked to the welding process.
Like most industrial robots, those involved in welding are normally equipped with one or more manipulators – the robotic arms that carry work tools at the ends – that move thanks to actuators controlled by software that reside in the electronic control components, and that take care of positioning the pieces, carrying out any preliminary operations and making the welds proper.
Depending on the type of work to be performed in CNC Manufacturing, the manipulators can be of different types: the movements of the tool holder arms can take place mainly along planes (cartesian coordinate robots) or along axes of rotation (SCARA robot), in a way more similar to what happens for human arms.
The second type of articulation is that which allows greater flexibility in the movements and can also operate in points that would otherwise be difficult to reach; it is a bit more complicated from a constructive point of view, and the calculations necessary to manage the displacements are also more complicated, but this last factor can be ignored because everything is done directly by the command software.