New era in our company
New era in our company
(OP)
Hello all, I have been on this board doing some research, just thought I would let everyone know our company is taking a big step into the future. We are currently an aerospace machine shop, doing some subassemblies, especially for Boeing. We just issued a PO for an ABB robotic weld cell with a Fronius power source for my project. We are really looking forward to the oportunities this will help open up for us. As I said, we have the one project that will make the robot cell economically favorable and will have plenty of extra capacity on it to sell. Everyone in the company is excited, hope I have good things to report soon.
Just wanted to say thanks for everyone, not just in this topic but throughout the board, it is a great resource. If anyone is interested I will keep you updated on progress.
Just wanted to say thanks for everyone, not just in this topic but throughout the board, it is a great resource. If anyone is interested I will keep you updated on progress.





RE: New era in our company
Most problems with first timers are mainly with part size and material variations which you should not have being a machine shop. One other common problem is the straightness of the wire/rod if you are doing MIG or TIG.
If you setup a location test point on a rigid part of the fixture when you first get the robot it will save a lot of time during the first few months. A simple test point we used for MIG was a pin the OD of the contact tip that had a sleeve about .1mm larger bore on it. We would then teach a point a known distance (a nickel thickness) above the post where the sleeve would freely slide over the contact tip of the MIG gun. This is a quick way to test the whole system for alignment. The most common problem the first few months will probably be bent welding torches. And teaching a path with a bent torch can waste a lot of time.
Hope you do very well.
Barry
RE: New era in our company
One of the benefits we see with the ABB is the Bullseye TCP checker, and the tactile sensing. I have made myself educated enough to know that the robot will only produce good parts if you feed it good parts.
We hope to fill a small niche, there aren't many weld shops who deal in machine shop tolerance work, and we haven't found any machine shops who aggressively go after contracts with welding involved.