Simple setup and operation enabled such an approach, and, ultimately, the technology adoption has doubled productivity on welding operations at Pik Rite.

Quick Results, Optimized Part Designs

“I purchased the system and launched it myself,” Thomas recalls, noting that his higher education consisted mostly of playing the trumpet, with no hint of automation or robotics. “With zero technical background, I picked up the cobot teach pendant. Obviously, there’s a learning curve, but if I can do it, almost anyone can, and I’m not even a welder. When I paired one of our welders with the system, I was able to share the robotics, and setup and programming went quickly.

“That’s what makes these systems, and cobots in general, so attractive,” he continues. “It’s the ability to program in short order and figure things out. These setups are very user friendly. We’ve since grown into welding assemblies that we hadn’t even considered at first.”

In fact, the capability delivered by cobot welding pushed Pik Rite to reconsider and improve its part designs.

“After employing cobot welding, we just threw our plasma-cut parts on the table—old part designs—and, though challenging, made the welding and assembly work,” Thomas says. “But then we decided to think more closely about how we engineer and build our pieces, and the materials that we use. Besides becoming more efficient on arc-on time, rethinking made us more efficient across the board. Cobot-welding capability made us focus more on repeatability and efficiency, and consider the entire scope of a project. 

“The cobot does not magically take care of everything,” he continues. “We soon realized that we could place a bit more design consideration into our parts and perhaps click parts together with slots and tabs or other weld-setup elements.”

He offers as an example an assembly for hinging tailgates to dump bodies.

“Before, we typically would cut parts on the plasma table and assemble them manually without any smart design elements,” says Thomas. “Correct and accurate completion required around 15 min. for setup and welding of two assemblies. Now, with smarter designs we’ve cut that time less than 8 min.

“Holy smokes, we thought, just designing it smart from the beginning or making some slight tweaks, cobot welding becomes so much more efficient,” Thomas continues, “and makes our employees so much more efficient. Employing cobot welding has been a good growth experience for us as an introduction to automation and an education in what’s required.”

And, positive change via the addition of cobot welding has extended well beyond assembly operations, according to Thomas.

Batch Production Leads to Laser Investment

“We’ve started batch production of parts due to the improved speed of fabricating single weldments,” Thomas explains. “Rather than producing parts for a single spreader, let’s make one hundred parts and store them, then pull them off the shelf when needed—so much more efficient. We’ve changed how we handle our quantities inhouse, producing greater quantities in less time and building ahead. 

“We also paint in bulk now instead of single-assembly painting,” he adds. “Basically, we now do what we had done on a much grander scale.”

Such efficiencies free employees for more productive work.

“We see the cobot-welding cell making parts in the corner by itself, with someone picking parts for the next batch,” says Thomas. “Right there we’ve doubled our output.”

More productive work also has led Pik Rite to invest in new capabilities.

“Cobot welding greatly helped drive our decision to buy (with the sale closed at FABTECH 2025) a fiber laser cutting machine,” he says—a 12-kW Mitsubishi with a two-pallet table, a continuous-production feature that enables operators to load material onto one pallet while the machine cuts on the second. “We’ve wanted to add laser cutting for a long time, but hadn’t seen the value until getting into automated welding and experiencing the advantages of slot tabbing and other design elements that fit well with the precision of laser cutting. Pairing laser precision with cobot welding is a game changer, and now we’re eyeballing sheet towers to enable lights-out laser cutting.”

And, having just purchased 60 acres of greenfield prime industrial property in Lewisburg, Pik Rite plans on consolidating into a new “mega facility,” as Thomas calls it, and further improve efficiencies.

“It’s very exciting,” he says. “Our shop floor is full and we do not have the process flow that we’d desire after adding piecemeal over time. The dream is to have, in a new location, a lean, efficient space in which to work.” MF

See also: MC Machinery Systems, Fronius USA LLC, Universal Robots, THG Automation, LLC

Technologies: Cutting, Pressroom Automation, Welding and Joining

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