Like most of its competitors in recent years they have encountered their fair share of challenges due to UK businesses ‘off-shoring’ their manufacturing. However things are changing and they have noticed that slowly ‘off-shored’ work is coming back generally because of quality issues. Clearly operating as an ISO 9001:2000 certified business offers a consistent level of high quality as long as the workforce can also meet the standards.

Involved mainly in the ‘yellow goods’ or heavy construction vehicle sector these day’s presents potential problems principally in skills shortages. People that leave when business is quiet are increasingly moving completely out of the manufacturing sector so that when orders increase and there is a need to re-employ, sadly those engineers aren’t there any more.

The importance of investment in manufacturing technology is the core element to achieving quality and so a first welding system was installed. It comprised of a robot and positioner with a turntable each end and the system was specially engineered for a particular job but its supply involved two different companies. The ability to involve a combination of companies to install a correctly functioning system was a valuable experience. It proved the case for further investment in more welding cells however one of the key lessons learnt was to ensure that future systems needed to be engineered by a single supplier.

Such weld cells can be unloaded from a lorry in about a day and a half to position, supply services and fix down. The programming and maintaining the system is very straight forward and involves no specialist robot or computer skills, operators have one day of training to become proficient. Overall cell control is through easy to use Arc-Tool software using welding terms allowing welding operators to quickly develop programming skills and teach pendant has application-specific hard keys enabling intuitive control of the operation.

The robot and work positioning table is enclosed within a guarded area accessible through a door fitted with a key exchange safety system. Customer tooling is located onto the work positioning table which has two positions allowing loading of components and welding to be carried out at the same time.
The robot used is a six-axis, modular construction, servo-driven unit designed for precise, high-speed welding and cutting. Based on a simple and reliable construction it provides accurate and consistent path performance. Robust guarding used to make the cell is totally enclosed and has key exchange interlocks, allowing access for maintenance and programming. They are fitted both to the door and turntable, then wired through to the control system.

Output of the robot can be the equivalent to three times that of a human welder and consistent in quality and so by capitalising on technology developed from thousands of FANUC welding systems installed world-wide, the weld cell can typically show a return on investment (ROI) within six months.

Since the initial build another three robot weld cells have been installed and now the company is able to weld the majority of its production on the systems so ensuring accurate control of product manufacturing.