The welding automation industry is increasingly implementing collaborative robot (cobot) arms from Universal Robots. UR cobot powered path-processing solutions include: BotX Welder by Hirebotics, Red-D-Arc and Airgas; Vectis Automation's Cobot Welding Tool; and SnapCut by ARC Specialties.
"The BotX Welder utilizes a UR10e cobot to address two major hurdles of robotic arc welding: ease of programming and the ease in which a customer can obtain the system without assuming the cost of ownership," said a spokesperson. "There are no installation costs with BotX, and with cloud monitoring, manufacturers pay only for the hours the system actually welds, thereby enabling the manufacturer to utilize BotX as business needs dictate."
"We chose Universal Robots to power BotX for several reasons," said Rob Goldiez, co-founder and CEO of Hirebotics. "With Universal Robots' open architecture, we were able to control not only wire feed speed and voltage, but torch angle as well, which ensures a quality weld every time."
Customers can teach BotX the required welds via an intuitive app on any smartphone or tablet using a library of welding recipes contained in the BotX software developed specifically for the BotX and optimized to work with Airgas' ARCAL shielding gas. The complete BotX product offering comes with the UR10e cobot arm, cloud connector, welder, wire feeder, MIG welding gun, weld table and configurable user-input touch buttons.
Vectis Automation's Cobot Welding Tool featuring a UR10e cobot is a portable, versatile and easy-to-use solution that is available as a low-risk, no-capital rent-to-own option. Vectis' Let's Weld Together intuitive programming interface is accessible directly through the UR cobot's own teach pendant. Programs can be created, saved and later recalled in order to handle the numerous part numbers typical for high mix/low volume shops.
The Vectis system comes with all hardware provided fully integrated onto a 3' x 6' mobile modular fixturing cart enabling metal fabricators to bring the cobot to the work, or the work to the cobot with no anchoring nor dedicated footprint required.
ARC Specialties-which previously released SnapWeld, an integrated MIG welding system for cobots-has further developed its UR product portfolio with the release of SnapCut that allows traditional metal fabricators to easily cut shapes in 3D steel components with no prior robotic or computer programming knowledge.
"With SnapCut, we have developed a tool that allows metal fabricators to deploy UR cobots to cut non-standard positions on-location with near plasma table quality," said John Martin, Vice President with ARC Specialties. "We are providing an easy automation alternative to a process that today is primarily done manually." Users can easily switch between plasma cutting and welding, turning SnapCut into SnapWeld. ARC Specialties updated the SnapWeld interface, pre-loading it with welding schedules so the user-with no prior robotic experience required-simply inputs material information and then teaches the welding path by pointing the robot at the weld.
For more information contact:
Universal Robots USA
5430 Data Court, Suite 300
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
844-462-6268
ur.na@universal-robots.com
www.universal-robots.com