How Welding Is Transformed by Collaborative Robots?

Collaborative robots enhance welding quality and efficiency

When completed, all are projected to produce billions of pounds for the UK economy. The typical bystander, however, frequently fails to recognize the different abilities and components necessary to make these sorts of undertakings a reality.

Welders are used in all of these projects to join and fuse the metals that are essential to their structure and design. And, because welding occupations are so important to communities all around the world, demand for welders is only expected to rise over the coming decade. According to one market research estimate, the industry is expected to reach a global market size of around US$29.66 billion by 2028.

The world would fall apart if welders did not exist. However, the future of the industry's employees is questionable. According to the Capital City Institution Group, London's largest FE institution, the number of welders in the UK has dropped by a quarter in five years. Similar scarcity is felt over the planet. According to the American Welding Society, 336,000 more welding experts will be needed in the United States by 2026.

The Art of Welding

Welding is a technical and creative art form that requires a trained human eye and outstanding physical dexterity for the most complicated metal welds. It takes years to perfect and achieve enough expertise to earn the trust and esteem of corporations and fellow specialists. Welding is an art form because of the creativity and passion that it entails.

The operation itself can be risky and time-consuming if a task involves long basic welds or hundreds of similar welds.

Due to some of these issues, fewer young people are entering the welding industry and obtaining the necessary abilities, resulting in a skills deficit. As the welding workforce ages, it becomes more difficult to 

fulfil increased demand in a variety of sectors.

This scarcity may potentially jeopardize the completion of important infrastructure projects, such as installing new pipelines for district heating or constructing wind turbines.

But what if welders could find better equipment to improve their working conditions and workload? This is where collaborative robots, also known as cobots, come in.

What's Next in The Growth of Welding?

Automated welding has been around for several decades, although it was previously limited to specialized applications. Huge robots, for example, were developed in the 1980s to assist in the welding of ship interiors.

When it first became available for welding, industrial automation was initially only practical for large enterprises working in high-volume, low-mix conditions. Automation is now frequently employed by welders. According to the International Federation of Robotics, welding applications will account for about one-fifth of all new robot installations in 2021, with the majority of applications in the automobile industry.

However, with so much intricacy necessary on the job, totally replacing humans with automated welding robots is not the solution to the skills deficit. To assist in enhancing welder productivity and overcome the skills deficit, the industry needs a collaborative strategy in which welders operate alongside smaller, cost-effective robots known as cobots.

One of Universal Robots' UK partners, Olympus Technologies Ltd, assists manufacturing organizations in deploying robotics. With new collaborative welding robots entering service every month, it has aided firms such as Storth Machinery, an agricultural management company, in developing and building simple robotic welding systems that can be swiftly incorporated into current workflows.

After all, welding involves more than just fulfilling production demands: great output requires creativity and problem-solving abilities.

Unleashing The Potential of Collaborative Welding

Even with readily available technology, cobot welding has just grown increasingly common in the last five years.

Delayed acceptance is owing in part to a lack of understanding and in part to the highly skilled nature of welding. It may be more difficult to discern the role of automation in a trade like welding than in other production tasks like lifting, packaging, and dispensing. In actuality, a cobot is a tool, much like a painter and his brush. Rather than taking over the aesthetic aspect of the position, it completes monotonous chores.

With a growing need for high-mix, low-volume metalwork and a scarcity of qualified personnel, manufacturers should priorities collaborative welding as a means of developing their industry. With readily available technology, the trade will be well-positioned to address future difficulties front on.