Cobot Welding Machine Adds Touch Sensing, Seam Tracking
September 20, 2024Comments
Miller Electric Mfg. LLC has added touch sensing and
through-the-arc seam tracking features to its Copilot collaborative robot
(cobot) welding system to ease welding automation and make it more effective,
according to company officials.
Touch sensing detects the location of a welding workpiece through voltage sensing and programmed torch sweeps, ensuring accurate placement before welding begins. It uses the welding wire as a probe to search for the part in a specified direction and then applies a shift value to the original location of the part. This helps overcome challenges such as poor part alignment, bad joint fit-up and inconsistent joint geometry.
Seam tracking operates via the robot taking live feedback from the welder to maintain a consistent relationship between the torch and the joint. The robot weaves across the joint, calculating the average amperage, and then adjusts its position based on the live amperage feedback. This helps to reduce the effects of part distortion, variation from part to part and inconsistent joints, ensuring that the joint is welded with the correct bead look and depth.
Along with a headless power-source design and a teach-pendant carriage, the Copilot provides a convenient user interface that eliminates extra steps such as continuously going to and from the power supply and teach pendant, according to Miller officials. Instead, the user’s attention is focused on the welding torch and cobot arm, reportedly making the Copilot intuitive and natural to welders of all skill levels.
Copilot also features the new Auto Deltaweld as its welding power source, which accommodates both single- and three-phase input. And, Modbus TCP communications protocol eliminates extra hardware and code between the power source and cobot-arm controller, further mitigating software bugs and the need to troubleshoot errors.
See also: Miller Electric Mfg. Co.
Technologies: Pressroom Automation, Welding and Joining
