Page 30 - MetalForming November 2015

As many as 20 welders help fabricate aluminum boxes for heavy-duty vehicle wreckers. Robotic welding provides a big assist in meeting increased production demands and in navigating a shortage of high-skill welders in the Nashville, TN, area.
Ham, Quality Industries’ vice presi- dent of engineering and technical services.
“The water-cooled, higher-amper- age torches use large-diameter flux- cored wire, allowing us to run a faster welding rig than is possible on some of the other equipment we have here,” Ham explains.
Seam-tracking technology improves quality and productivity in this cell.
“We deal with a lot of part varia- tion,” Ham says. “A single assembly, made from two L-shaped brackets, requires 32 in. of weld. The brackets mate to each other, and when angles vary, even just a little, from bracket to bracket, we would have to perform a large amount of rework. With seam- tracking, the torches find the joint even if the angles vary by 1 deg., and stay dialed in to perform good welds.”
“The real challenge for us is making sure that material movement and flow around those areas are improved,” adds Fann.
Efforts are underway to do just that. In adding to its robotic-welding roster, Quality Industries has sought to com- monize its equipment, according to Ham, to ease training, maintenance and operation, and to better standard- ize and simplify fixturing to improve workflow.
tour with Warren Hayslip, president and CEO, and Terry Tidwell, vice pres- ident of sales and business develop- ment. The company also employs a large number of welders to fabricate structures that support solar panels. These operations were candidates for robotic welding due to the manpower issues described above, and also due to increased production demands. In these areas, increased use of robotic welding has brought a number of advantages.
“Robotic welding has improved part repeatability,” says Fann, “so delivery quality has improved. It also has improved efficiency and the overall operation of our fabrication cells.”
Tack Welding Eliminated
One example: the addition of a Panasonic dual-robot turntable using welding equipment from Miller Elec- tric. Previously, tack welds provided by
human welders held parts together for welding of the assembly via an older robot. Testament to the company’s for- ward thinking, engineers developed what they refer to as “no-tack fixtures” to work in conjunction with the dual- robot setup.
“Now we load the fixtures and the robots perform all of the welding,” explains Fann, noting that as the dual- robot cell welds, personnel load parts into a second fixture for welding as soon as the previous assembly is com- pleted. “This setup has allowed us to greatly increase capacity for the solar product.”
That cell was tailor-made for pro- cessing thicker steel, according to Ken
Robotic Welding
28 MetalForming/November 2015
www.metalformingmagazine.com
Parts produced at Quality Industries are assembled for delivery to customers in industries including heavy transportation, alternative energy, electrical enclosures, and towing and recovery equipment.