6 ms·

Welding and the automation frontier

121 points by shaldengeki 3y ago

howmayiannoyyou 3y ago
Author is using questionable metrics: - Number of welders declined as US manufacturing has declined in the US. Manufacturing that remains utilized robotic welding extensively. You can be sure the demand for welders in China has been the inverse of the United States. - Welding use in automotive declined as US manufacturing started using more plastics, metal foams, fasteners & automated spot welders in their operations. It also declined as casting & powder technology advanced, and it will decline further as more car makers adopt mega-castings. - He cites ship building, but does so somewhat incorrectly. Welding is still widely used in ship building, but there are few ship builders left in the US. To the larger point, yes, of course AI will displace welders, but its very unlikely to do so for repairs, small runs and specialized applications. Its actually a well paying and in-demand skill, especially if combined with other mechanical skilsets.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Not to mention advanced stamping! Modern automotive stamping (turning sheet metal into complicated structural parts) is an amazing technology that reduces the number of welds required.
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    ^ This. And more advanced design and manufacturing methods that have come as a result of the proliferation of CAD design and analysis software. Also, metallurgy in general has improved leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Regardless, there is a lot of ways for welding to go wrong. That's a design consideration that engineers try to drive out of the equation, especially in a situation where they're responsible for the safe usage of a multi-ton piece of machinery that can move at 100mph.
- MikeAmelung 3y ago
  The tagline of the site is "Why buildings are built the way they are." And the author completely fails to mention the welding that goes into buildings...
  - Oarch 3y ago
    It started off quite construction focused, but it's since veered far off that course
- Arainach 3y ago
  Your points are addressed in the article. It specifically looks at the number of welding jobs in car manufacturing (still done here) over time.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Manufacturing has not declines much in the US but jobs have declined. We make as much as before, but because of automation few people do the work.
datadrivenangel 3y ago
" A human welder is less productive, but remains more flexible than a robot, and evidently enough welding tasks require that sort of flexibility that much welding in the US is still done manually. Interestingly, the pitch for a lot of robotic welding systems is often more focused on the difficulty of finding skilled welders, rather than on the potential cost savings of a welding robot." Obligatory reference to the XKCD automation time savings matrix. Most tasks in construction and repair and other low-volume medium dollar activities aren't worth automating because you only do them a few times, and the cost of setting up the automation to work correctly would be significantly more expensive. The value of automation in these domains in quality, which is why you also see it in low-volume high-cost domains like aerospace. If you're going to go to the cost of x-raying every weld anyways, having a welder set up the welding bot to do the actual work makes a lot of sense given the cost of rework.
- Closi 3y ago
  As an additional note - the cost of the robot is only part of the cost. You have to bring the parts to be welded together to start with (i.e. some sort of conveyor system - decent conveyor is like $4-5k per meter) and the cost quoted there also doesn't include integration, programming, maintenance, project management, M&E, and support. As soon as the payback is compelling companies will put it in - but I suspect the quoted $100k here actually ends up being more like $300k-$500k by the time it's installed and all costs are pushed in. Then there is probably a $30-50k maintenance contract that sits on top of it.
  - dieselgate 3y ago
    The maintenance contract is probably very relevant in day-to-day business operations but easy to overlook otherwise. I'm not intimately familiar with this type of work but get the impression most (structural) welders are responsible for their own equipment (and operate their own company/business) or Big Construction Co. rents whatever welder they need from Enterprise Rental Co. The needs of location-static manufacturing (building a vehicle in a factory; fabrication) will always be different than location-dynamic building (structures etc.)
  - 3y ago
dieselgate 3y ago
I like seeing welding posts on HN and cool they come up few times a months. The GE chain making machine is pretty interesting and can't really imagine doing it by hand otherwise (at scale). Saw a hand welded chain segment the other day on a bike displayed at a shop - kind of used as a quicklink but more permanent. It was slightly puzzling to see how they went about it but whatever. Welding and automation is something that kind of compounds on itself - for example comparing wirefeed/mig to stick.
shooshx 3y ago
Feels like this article was cut in the middle just before the interesting part, where he's supposed to explain why welding for construction was not automated a much and how all this is relevant to AI...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  This author tends to write series on a topic, rather than a single article. This first one is probably just a background on welding and welding automation. The next part will likely delve into the specifics of construction welding, why it hasn't had the same level of automation, and attempts to change that.
xyzzy123 3y ago
I think the article misses the mark by not highlighting the huge difference between say, construction / site welding and manufacturing welding. It's sort of a "category error" to lump all jobs together where you happen use a welder. A lot of manufacuring welding was already low paid and boring, you sit there with your mig gun and make the same welds over and over. Often the hiring pool is "unskilled" labour (i.e, you take people who didn't have the job title "welder") and they train you to operate this one station. These jobs are robot fodder and honestly that's probably a good thing. Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of "one off" work. (Of course there are a lot more niches than these two!). These are barely the same market so you'll be confused by the numbers if you consider everyone to be in the "welder" labour pool.
- dieselgate 3y ago
  I agree with your points but still found the article interesting - was also a bit thrown off since "construction" more commonly applies to the site welding you mentioned rather than manufacturing/fab.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  > Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of "one off" work. Also coordination between trades, MEP systems in large spaces need lots of coordination to avoid conflicts. I agree, it’s hard to imagine instances in which automated welding would help out pipefitters, for example. Automated welding above ceilings or inside a mechanical chase doesn’t seem like it would save much time. The welding robot would need to get onto a lift or be hauled inside the chase. A lot of the battle with pipe fitting is wrestling the large diameter pipes into place so they can be welded. Same deal with tinners, ductwork is generally in places that aren’t easy to access. I’m much less familiar with the sort of welding that ironworkers do (95% of the construction work I oversee is remodel/working in existing spaces) but perhaps that could benefit from automation. As a construction professional, construction automation beyond simple things like automated CMU machines seems like a very difficult problem to solve in general, in both the field and management sides.
aj7 3y ago
This article seems circa 2019. Laser welding with flexible, lightweight heads and 1-3kW fiber lasers are poised to change methodology by removing parameters. Smaller, handheld units area easier than glue guns to handle.
- DannyBee 3y ago
  I own a 3kw handheld laser welding rig. Yes, they are easier than glue guns to handle. But you know, a lot more dangerous. Particularly since the lasers currently used are invisible and reflected light will still destroy your eyes (or someone elses) at 50+ft, easily. Not to mention the actual laser danger itself (you can easily get a 4th degree burn in an instant). So despite being easier to get right/handle from a welding perspective, they require significantly more safety precautions. Almost all videos show how easily and quickly they weld or clean or cut. Which is true! It's really easy and fast to get right. But they also often don't show that you need laser curtains, etc. You also have to understand what kind of laser is being used to understand what safety equipment to get. It's not as easy as mig/tig where you just get a welding helmet and declare victory, you have to understand the laser wavelength and required OD to protect yourself. They are also still really expensive, but that will change. But using laser welding on like a construction site or whatever the same way non-laser welding is would be quite dangerous. All of this is why serious safety interlocks/etc are used on laser welding equipment, even handheld, by everyone not making some crazy youtube video.
  - nullc 3y ago
    Other than a smaller HAZ, whats the advantage of laser welding vs mig/tig arc welding?
    - digdugdirk 3y ago
      Ease of getting a quality weld is probably the most important thing with these. I'm sure someone with more experience than me can jump in if they have another reasoning.
    - DannyBee 3y ago
learn_more 3y ago
"Interestingly, the pitch for a lot of robotic welding systems is often more focused on the difficulty of finding skilled welders, rather than on the potential cost savings of a welding robot" Inability to find skilled welders IS THE SAME as seeking cost savings, because in a market economy, skilled welders can be found if you pay enough.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Unionized trades have a lot of resistance to thinking of pay as a market parameter, because you can't in some cases pay more than the union contract says you can.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    That's not how salaries are defined. Exihibit A: Big tech coluding to keep SV salaries as low as possible.
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      I am not sure what you are arguing there, big tech collusion doesn't influence welding.
photochemsyn 3y ago
I read this article with interest and was glad to see it mentioned laser welding. When I was about 17 years old (*having lied about my age) I got a remarkably well-paid job in a Silicon Valley laser welding shop, fabricating thermally sensitive fuses of some exotic materials that were fairly difficult to attach to a standard electronics package, hence the exotic method. Fun times, once the lead tech mixed up the gases for the laser machine and we had a nice 50-foot tall pillar of fire on the shop floor that sent us all running for cover. I feel like I experienced the tail-end of something that was once quite common in the USA, and I was able to afford a decent apartment in Silicon Valley back then on my own with no college degree, though I did see that the folks upstairs in the R & D division were much better paid and had better jobs (I was once sourced to them as a gopher for a couple of weeks) so I went off to college and graduate school and never really told any of those people where I had come from, just nodded and smiled along and used my assembly line background to great effect in getting things done at scale. I pretended I was one of them, and that was a good move. See what happens when you let the rats out of their cages, governor?
jacquesm 3y ago
You have a ton of different kinds of welding and these are not all the same. Welding up new stuff in series production, welding for reparations to existing structures and welding when producing one-offs are all completely different both from an environmental aspect as well as from the technology and techniques available. Only the first readily lends itself to automation, the other two are still the domain of manual welding and even the stuff that is automated quite often requires experienced welders to fix up after the robot for things that didn't quite go as they should have to ensure the welds pass muster. And welding robots can't fix their own mistakes (yet). Welders are artists at making the tools to do the job, jigs (even one-off jigs) and fixtures as well as creative ways to manipulate the tooling (for instance in cramped or inaccessible spaces), pantographs and all kinds of material knowledge go into the mix for a complex welding job. Welders as a rule are highly opinionated (not unlike software people) about how they approach their job, they take substantial pride in what they make and by the time they reach their pension are more sought after than they can handle work-wise. I've seen enough of this world to know that even though the stuff that I make doesn't break and looks reasonably ok that I'm a rank amateur at best compared to a real welder and that it takes me 10x longer and what I make is inferior compared to what an experienced welder can do with their eyes closed. Welding diverse materials, different positions, material that varies in thickness throughout, material that has been work hardened by cutting (for instance by using a plasma cutter or a blowtorch) and a whole raft of other little details including prepwork and ability for the welder + tools to be brought close to the job make me think that this kind of work is going to be off the roster for automation for a long time to come.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  I've done some welding, both with gas and electric. I discovered that doing a good weld requires a lot of experience and skill. Usually, I just made a heap of slag with my welds. In contrast, soldering pipes is easy. I've done a modest amount of plumbing work, and never had less than a perfect soldered pipe connection.
csours 3y ago
Disclosure: I work for General Motors, anything written here is solely my own experience and opinion. I'm not an expert on welding automation, but I've been around it quite a bit. I think the most important thing to say is: Automation doesn't solve problems; to use automation, you have to solve all the problems that automation will encounter. This is called Design for Automation. From the article: > "Manufacturers adjusted their upstream processes to produce more uniform parts with less variability. Part tolerances were reduced in things like metal stamping, jigs and fixturing were made more precise, new handling methods were introduced to prevent parts from being damaged moving between stations, and parts were thoroughly cleaned before welding." Some notes: the welder may be the cheapest part of the automation solution. A welder is deployed in a 'station' in a 'cell' in a 'zone'. Each of those has it's controller (PLC, robot controller, weld controller) of some type. The station includes some kind of conveyance or handling. There's also a jig or parts holder for every weld station. There's about 1 skilled tradesperson (electrician) per zone or two. There's also various kinds of monitoring, from cycle times to weld tip temperature. Fun fact: the aluminum welders have little 'pencil sharpeners' that shave the copper weld tips to keep the welds consistent. Aluminum spot welders don't spark like steel welders do. Every so often, a part is taken off for destructive testing with a hammer and chisel. In addition to welding, a lot of glue is used in the body shop. Glue is great because it has a lot of surface area, and it stops squeaks, rattles and other noises.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  This is all exactly in line with my own experience. Welding itself is a very small fraction of producing welded articles, the prepwork is by far the majority of the work and consistency is an enormous part of that. Without consistency in the supply chain (size, thickness, impurities, surface cleanliness, pre-heat and so on) and in the environment you can just about forget about automation.
  - rokkitmensch 3y ago
    "Welding is fun. Prep is not."
    - 3y ago
iamsanteri 3y ago
When looking at amount of jobs in the U.S. towards the bottom of the article, he forgets (or fails) to mention that lots of welding was likely moved overseas until recently. He seems a bit surprised about amounts of welding jobs going up again since 2010’s in the U.S. which is a rather narrow view of the situation in this regard if you ask me.
Animats 3y ago
As I've pointed out before, robot manipulation in unstructured situations still sucks. Plus, for something like welding, workholding is a big part of the problem. You need to somehow grab onto the parts and hold them in position. In a production plant, you have special purpose jigs built to hold specific parts. Outside of that, it gets much messier.
gtzi 3y ago
Bota Systems (botasys.com) to the rescue! Force-torque sensing can truly deliver in such cases! (Disclosure: I am an investor in the company.)

121 points by shaldengeki 3y ago

Author is using questionable metrics: - Number of welders declined as US manufacturing has declined in the US. Manufacturing that remains utilized robotic welding extensively. You can be sure the demand for welders in China has been the inverse of the United States. - Welding use in automotive declined as US manufacturing started using more plastics, metal foams, fasteners & automated spot welders in their operations. It also declined as casting & powder technology advanced, and it will decline further as more car makers adopt mega-castings. - He cites ship building, but does so somewhat incorrectly. Welding is still widely used in ship building, but there are few ship builders left in the US. To the larger point, yes, of course AI will displace welders, but its very unlikely to do so for repairs, small runs and specialized applications. Its actually a well paying and in-demand skill, especially if combined with other mechanical skilsets.

datadrivenangel 3y ago
Not to mention advanced stamping! Modern automotive stamping (turning sheet metal into complicated structural parts) is an amazing technology that reduces the number of welds required.
- digdugdirk 3y ago
  ^ This. And more advanced design and manufacturing methods that have come as a result of the proliferation of CAD design and analysis software. Also, metallurgy in general has improved leaps and bounds in the past few decades. Regardless, there is a lot of ways for welding to go wrong. That's a design consideration that engineers try to drive out of the equation, especially in a situation where they're responsible for the safe usage of a multi-ton piece of machinery that can move at 100mph.
MikeAmelung 3y ago
The tagline of the site is "Why buildings are built the way they are." And the author completely fails to mention the welding that goes into buildings...
- Oarch 3y ago
  It started off quite construction focused, but it's since veered far off that course
Arainach 3y ago
Your points are addressed in the article. It specifically looks at the number of welding jobs in car manufacturing (still done here) over time.
bluGill 3y ago
Manufacturing has not declines much in the US but jobs have declined. We make as much as before, but because of automation few people do the work.

datadrivenangel 3y ago

" A human welder is less productive, but remains more flexible than a robot, and evidently enough welding tasks require that sort of flexibility that much welding in the US is still done manually. Interestingly, the pitch for a lot of robotic welding systems is often more focused on the difficulty of finding skilled welders, rather than on the potential cost savings of a welding robot." Obligatory reference to the XKCD automation time savings matrix. Most tasks in construction and repair and other low-volume medium dollar activities aren't worth automating because you only do them a few times, and the cost of setting up the automation to work correctly would be significantly more expensive. The value of automation in these domains in quality, which is why you also see it in low-volume high-cost domains like aerospace. If you're going to go to the cost of x-raying every weld anyways, having a welder set up the welding bot to do the actual work makes a lot of sense given the cost of rework.

Closi 3y ago
As an additional note - the cost of the robot is only part of the cost. You have to bring the parts to be welded together to start with (i.e. some sort of conveyor system - decent conveyor is like $4-5k per meter) and the cost quoted there also doesn't include integration, programming, maintenance, project management, M&E, and support. As soon as the payback is compelling companies will put it in - but I suspect the quoted $100k here actually ends up being more like $300k-$500k by the time it's installed and all costs are pushed in. Then there is probably a $30-50k maintenance contract that sits on top of it.
- dieselgate 3y ago
  The maintenance contract is probably very relevant in day-to-day business operations but easy to overlook otherwise. I'm not intimately familiar with this type of work but get the impression most (structural) welders are responsible for their own equipment (and operate their own company/business) or Big Construction Co. rents whatever welder they need from Enterprise Rental Co. The needs of location-static manufacturing (building a vehicle in a factory; fabrication) will always be different than location-dynamic building (structures etc.)
- 3y ago

dieselgate 3y ago

I like seeing welding posts on HN and cool they come up few times a months. The GE chain making machine is pretty interesting and can't really imagine doing it by hand otherwise (at scale). Saw a hand welded chain segment the other day on a bike displayed at a shop - kind of used as a quicklink but more permanent. It was slightly puzzling to see how they went about it but whatever. Welding and automation is something that kind of compounds on itself - for example comparing wirefeed/mig to stick.

shooshx 3y ago

Feels like this article was cut in the middle just before the interesting part, where he's supposed to explain why welding for construction was not automated a much and how all this is relevant to AI...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
MostlyStable 3y ago
This author tends to write series on a topic, rather than a single article. This first one is probably just a background on welding and welding automation. The next part will likely delve into the specifics of construction welding, why it hasn't had the same level of automation, and attempts to change that.

xyzzy123 3y ago

I think the article misses the mark by not highlighting the huge difference between say, construction / site welding and manufacturing welding. It's sort of a "category error" to lump all jobs together where you happen use a welder. A lot of manufacuring welding was already low paid and boring, you sit there with your mig gun and make the same welds over and over. Often the hiring pool is "unskilled" labour (i.e, you take people who didn't have the job title "welder") and they train you to operate this one station. These jobs are robot fodder and honestly that's probably a good thing. Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of "one off" work. (Of course there are a lot more niches than these two!). These are barely the same market so you'll be confused by the numbers if you consider everyone to be in the "welder" labour pool.

dieselgate 3y ago
I agree with your points but still found the article interesting - was also a bit thrown off since "construction" more commonly applies to the site welding you mentioned rather than manufacturing/fab.
quickthrowman 3y ago
> Site or construction welding requires a lot more adaptability, e.g. ability to read plans, resolve issues when the plans are wrong, handle different materials, do layout, alignment, jigs etc and provides an endless stream of "one off" work. Also coordination between trades, MEP systems in large spaces need lots of coordination to avoid conflicts. I agree, it’s hard to imagine instances in which automated welding would help out pipefitters, for example. Automated welding above ceilings or inside a mechanical chase doesn’t seem like it would save much time. The welding robot would need to get onto a lift or be hauled inside the chase. A lot of the battle with pipe fitting is wrestling the large diameter pipes into place so they can be welded. Same deal with tinners, ductwork is generally in places that aren’t easy to access. I’m much less familiar with the sort of welding that ironworkers do (95% of the construction work I oversee is remodel/working in existing spaces) but perhaps that could benefit from automation. As a construction professional, construction automation beyond simple things like automated CMU machines seems like a very difficult problem to solve in general, in both the field and management sides.

aj7 3y ago

This article seems circa 2019. Laser welding with flexible, lightweight heads and 1-3kW fiber lasers are poised to change methodology by removing parameters. Smaller, handheld units area easier than glue guns to handle.

DannyBee 3y ago
I own a 3kw handheld laser welding rig. Yes, they are easier than glue guns to handle. But you know, a lot more dangerous. Particularly since the lasers currently used are invisible and reflected light will still destroy your eyes (or someone elses) at 50+ft, easily. Not to mention the actual laser danger itself (you can easily get a 4th degree burn in an instant). So despite being easier to get right/handle from a welding perspective, they require significantly more safety precautions. Almost all videos show how easily and quickly they weld or clean or cut. Which is true! It's really easy and fast to get right. But they also often don't show that you need laser curtains, etc. You also have to understand what kind of laser is being used to understand what safety equipment to get. It's not as easy as mig/tig where you just get a welding helmet and declare victory, you have to understand the laser wavelength and required OD to protect yourself. They are also still really expensive, but that will change. But using laser welding on like a construction site or whatever the same way non-laser welding is would be quite dangerous. All of this is why serious safety interlocks/etc are used on laser welding equipment, even handheld, by everyone not making some crazy youtube video.
- nullc 3y ago
  Other than a smaller HAZ, whats the advantage of laser welding vs mig/tig arc welding?
  - digdugdirk 3y ago
    Ease of getting a quality weld is probably the most important thing with these. I'm sure someone with more experience than me can jump in if they have another reasoning.
  - DannyBee 3y ago

learn_more 3y ago

"Interestingly, the pitch for a lot of robotic welding systems is often more focused on the difficulty of finding skilled welders, rather than on the potential cost savings of a welding robot" Inability to find skilled welders IS THE SAME as seeking cost savings, because in a market economy, skilled welders can be found if you pay enough.

whatshisface 3y ago
Unionized trades have a lot of resistance to thinking of pay as a market parameter, because you can't in some cases pay more than the union contract says you can.
- hef19898 3y ago
  That's not how salaries are defined. Exihibit A: Big tech coluding to keep SV salaries as low as possible.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    I am not sure what you are arguing there, big tech collusion doesn't influence welding.

photochemsyn 3y ago

I read this article with interest and was glad to see it mentioned laser welding. When I was about 17 years old (*having lied about my age) I got a remarkably well-paid job in a Silicon Valley laser welding shop, fabricating thermally sensitive fuses of some exotic materials that were fairly difficult to attach to a standard electronics package, hence the exotic method. Fun times, once the lead tech mixed up the gases for the laser machine and we had a nice 50-foot tall pillar of fire on the shop floor that sent us all running for cover. I feel like I experienced the tail-end of something that was once quite common in the USA, and I was able to afford a decent apartment in Silicon Valley back then on my own with no college degree, though I did see that the folks upstairs in the R & D division were much better paid and had better jobs (I was once sourced to them as a gopher for a couple of weeks) so I went off to college and graduate school and never really told any of those people where I had come from, just nodded and smiled along and used my assembly line background to great effect in getting things done at scale. I pretended I was one of them, and that was a good move. See what happens when you let the rats out of their cages, governor?

jacquesm 3y ago

You have a ton of different kinds of welding and these are not all the same. Welding up new stuff in series production, welding for reparations to existing structures and welding when producing one-offs are all completely different both from an environmental aspect as well as from the technology and techniques available. Only the first readily lends itself to automation, the other two are still the domain of manual welding and even the stuff that is automated quite often requires experienced welders to fix up after the robot for things that didn't quite go as they should have to ensure the welds pass muster. And welding robots can't fix their own mistakes (yet). Welders are artists at making the tools to do the job, jigs (even one-off jigs) and fixtures as well as creative ways to manipulate the tooling (for instance in cramped or inaccessible spaces), pantographs and all kinds of material knowledge go into the mix for a complex welding job. Welders as a rule are highly opinionated (not unlike software people) about how they approach their job, they take substantial pride in what they make and by the time they reach their pension are more sought after than they can handle work-wise. I've seen enough of this world to know that even though the stuff that I make doesn't break and looks reasonably ok that I'm a rank amateur at best compared to a real welder and that it takes me 10x longer and what I make is inferior compared to what an experienced welder can do with their eyes closed. Welding diverse materials, different positions, material that varies in thickness throughout, material that has been work hardened by cutting (for instance by using a plasma cutter or a blowtorch) and a whole raft of other little details including prepwork and ability for the welder + tools to be brought close to the job make me think that this kind of work is going to be off the roster for automation for a long time to come.

WalterBright 3y ago
I've done some welding, both with gas and electric. I discovered that doing a good weld requires a lot of experience and skill. Usually, I just made a heap of slag with my welds. In contrast, soldering pipes is easy. I've done a modest amount of plumbing work, and never had less than a perfect soldered pipe connection.

csours 3y ago

Disclosure: I work for General Motors, anything written here is solely my own experience and opinion. I'm not an expert on welding automation, but I've been around it quite a bit. I think the most important thing to say is: Automation doesn't solve problems; to use automation, you have to solve all the problems that automation will encounter. This is called Design for Automation. From the article: > "Manufacturers adjusted their upstream processes to produce more uniform parts with less variability. Part tolerances were reduced in things like metal stamping, jigs and fixturing were made more precise, new handling methods were introduced to prevent parts from being damaged moving between stations, and parts were thoroughly cleaned before welding." Some notes: the welder may be the cheapest part of the automation solution. A welder is deployed in a 'station' in a 'cell' in a 'zone'. Each of those has it's controller (PLC, robot controller, weld controller) of some type. The station includes some kind of conveyance or handling. There's also a jig or parts holder for every weld station. There's about 1 skilled tradesperson (electrician) per zone or two. There's also various kinds of monitoring, from cycle times to weld tip temperature. Fun fact: the aluminum welders have little 'pencil sharpeners' that shave the copper weld tips to keep the welds consistent. Aluminum spot welders don't spark like steel welders do. Every so often, a part is taken off for destructive testing with a hammer and chisel. In addition to welding, a lot of glue is used in the body shop. Glue is great because it has a lot of surface area, and it stops squeaks, rattles and other noises.

jacquesm 3y ago
This is all exactly in line with my own experience. Welding itself is a very small fraction of producing welded articles, the prepwork is by far the majority of the work and consistency is an enormous part of that. Without consistency in the supply chain (size, thickness, impurities, surface cleanliness, pre-heat and so on) and in the environment you can just about forget about automation.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  "Welding is fun. Prep is not."
  - 3y ago

iamsanteri 3y ago

When looking at amount of jobs in the U.S. towards the bottom of the article, he forgets (or fails) to mention that lots of welding was likely moved overseas until recently. He seems a bit surprised about amounts of welding jobs going up again since 2010’s in the U.S. which is a rather narrow view of the situation in this regard if you ask me.

Animats 3y ago

As I've pointed out before, robot manipulation in unstructured situations still sucks. Plus, for something like welding, workholding is a big part of the problem. You need to somehow grab onto the parts and hold them in position. In a production plant, you have special purpose jigs built to hold specific parts. Outside of that, it gets much messier.

gtzi 3y ago

Bota Systems (botasys.com) to the rescue! Force-torque sensing can truly deliver in such cases! (Disclosure: I am an investor in the company.)