Does you’re welding process involve irregular workpieces? Or awkward positioning and precise results? You should consider a welding positioner.
Whether it’s pipe welding applications, or agri and plant welding and fabrication. Investing in a welding turntable or positioner will enhance efficiency. Thus improving your bottom line and working conditions.
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What is a welding positioner?
Designed to handle work pieces when welding, a positioner or turntable consists of:
- table top with T-slots
- manual or motorised rotating mechanism (positioner only)
- solid steel frame
The workpiece fixes to the table top with a jig or chuck. A positioner will rotate through 360 degrees and tilt. Thus allowing the welder best positioning to focus on creating the weld. However, turntable welding will only rotate the workpiece.
Welding positioner uses.
A rotary welding positioner is utilised in pipe welding applications, as well as tube welding.
The ability to rotate and tilt the table to the best welding position is ideal for welding flanges. Plus other fixtures and fittings associated with industrial pipe and tube welding.
Large, heavy-duty positioners can handle digger buckets, structural steel and plant manufacturing components.
Types of welding positioner.
To make the best use of your welding positioner turntable, you will need to consider the type of work you are doing. The main types include:
- Benchtop welding positioner.
Also known as a tabletop welding positioner, they are used for welding of smaller components. Thus making ideal TIG welding turntables, as well as tube welding positioners.
Commonly used in precision welding work, such as exhaust manufacturing and valve work. The ideal solution to achieve consistent, circumferential welds of small components.
Click here to view bench top welding positioners for sale.
- Conventional welding positioner.
A manual welding positioner is still able to rotate through 360 degrees, but it’s done by hand. Usually by using a hand wheel or crank, being manually turned to rotate the table top.
This solution is ideal if you would only need to use it every now and again. Plus, if you only need horizontal plane positioning. We wouldn’t recommend a manual welding positioner in a production metal fabrication environment.
Click here to view manual welding positioners for sale.
- Manual welding positioner.
A manual welding positioner is still able to rotate through 360 degrees, but it’s done by hand. Usually by using a hand wheel or crank, being manually turned to rotate the table top.
This solution is ideal if you would only need to use it every now and again. Plus, if you only need horizontal plane positioning.
We wouldn’t recommend a manual welding positioner in a production metal fabrication environment.
Click here to view manual welding positioners for sale.
- 3 axis welding positioner.
If you’re looking for a complete handling solution for your welding needs, a 3 axis positioner is the perfect fit. Not only do they rotate and tilt like a conventional unit, they also raise and lower via a hydraulic system.
Advantage being you won’t need extra lifting equipment such as cranes and slings. Creating a more efficient and safer workplace.
Industries that benefit most from a hydraulic welding positioner include oil and gas. As well as renewables, ship building and automotive.
Click here to view 3 axis welding positioners for sale.
- Robotic welding positioner.
Designed for automatic use only, with a robotic cell or automated welding solution. A welding positioner for robotic use needs very precise construction. Allowing for little to no room for tolerances. They need to have the capability to integrate with the welding source and manipulator.
This is why we would recommend purchasing a turnkey solution from the manufacturer.
Welding positioner manufacturers.
Preferred welding positioner manufacturers include Bode, ProArc, Pema, ESAB, Macobe and Lincoln Electric. This is due to their reputation Worldwide for quality machines, built to last. As well as a good range of solutions.
Other manufacturers include Gullco, Pandjiris, Silvistrini, Red-D-Arc and Muller Opalden.
At Kinetic Technologies, we know there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to excellent automation. Every shop’s processes, parts, and people present unique challenges, requirements, and capabilities. Before we design and build custom welding fixtures, we dig deep to thoroughly understand your company’s precise needs. This two-part series will outline everything you should know about obtaining custom welding fixtures from Kinetic.
10 Questions that Empower Exceptional Welding Fixtures
With your answers to 10 key questions, we can begin the detailed work of crafting a custom cobot welding fixture that does the work you want—the way you want it.
Are you interested in learning more about Auto Welding Positioner? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!
1. What’s your primary objective for your fixture?
Every customer has their own reasons for commissioning a custom welding fixture. Identify your main goal, and we’ll prioritize solutions to match.
- Quality. Consistent quality is a major concern for many Kinetic customers. Maybe you’re having issues with measurements, or your current fixture is causing surface damage to your parts. We develop welding fixtures that resolve any number of quality concerns; just tell us what you need!
- Ergonomics. We tackled one outdated setup where thermal expansion made our customer’s parts nearly impossible to remove from the fixture. The problem was so severe that our customer kept a sledgehammer on hand simply to beat the parts out of the fixture after welding! Ergonomic issues can make for funny stories, but in truth, they’re serious problems that need to be corrected. That’s what we’re here for!
- Safety. Some parts are simply dangerous without the proper fixturing. Maybe they’re extremely heavy or off-center, or perhaps they have plunger stops that can cut fingers (or worse)! In other cases, the original welding fixtures themselves pose a safety risk. Regardless of the cause, Kinetic can devise a resolution.
- Speed. One of the most common reasons our customers obtain custom welding fixtures is to speed up production. Kinetic develops fixtures that can cut a company’s production time by a factor of 10! To obtain such high levels of productivity, we work directly with your manufacturing specialists and welders to develop a deep understanding of your welding process. With total comprehension of your welding sequence, the Kinetic team is equipped to incorporate the most important elements, suggest improvements, and eliminate any cumbersome processes that create bottlenecks and increase costs.
- Process flow. Our team needs to understand your entire facility flow so we can develop a practical fixture for your purposes. After all, there’s no advantage to dramatically increasing your welding potential if you can’t increase your parts production to match! Once we’ve assessed your process control outline all the way through to material flows, we’ll have a better idea of how your business can benefit from a custom fixture or cobot integration.
2. How consistent are your upstream parts?
Manual layouts are typically quite forgiving, but welding fixtures must be designed specifically for your actual upstream process. If your parts often vary by 16”, for example, that factor influences our fixturing design. With accurate information, we can develop your fixture to accommodate any inconsistencies.
3. Do you have CAD data for your parts?
It’s not all that uncommon for a manufacturer to work primarily from paper drawings. If you don’t have any CAD data or 3D models of your assemblies, we’re happy to reverse engineer and create 3D models of your parts. CAD data gives us the dimensional details required to accurately customize your cobot welding fixture.
4. What welding process do you use?
Different fixturing requirements apply to different welding processes. Are you MIG welding? TIG welding? Is a robot doing the work? Then, of course, there are numerous process versions to consider: globular spray, CV spray, pulse, mag CMT, short circuit, and more. A fixture tailored for a single process may not support a different process should you make changes later on, so we want to know all the ways you intend to utilize your fixture before getting started.
5. What are your weld callouts?
It’s important for us to know any weld specifications and callouts, like bead length and width. One current Kinetic customer employs an internal weld inspection process that exceeds most AWS standards! This level of particularity ensures exceptional part quality, but it also demands welding fixtures advanced enough to accommodate the processes necessary for achieving critical weld callouts. For instance, if the weld callouts require multi-pass welding, the robot and the fixture must work in tandem to provide the best quality weld.
6. What is your part’s purpose?
Parts requiring watertight or extremely strong welds necessitate highly specialized fixturing. For instance, one of our customers makes a part for off-road, safety-critical, industrial use, so their fixturing must adequately secure each part throughout a heavy-duty welding process intended to prevent cracking.
7. What welding positions do you use?
Some customers don’t have a preference; they can weld flat, vertical, uphill, and overhead. Others adhere to weld specifications that dictate a single welding orientation, meaning we may need to develop their welding fixtures with uniquely tailored positioners.
8. How do you ground your fixtures?
To facilitate a quality arc and a strong weld, the welding fixture must be appropriately grounded. We ensure reliable earth grounding by designing grounding points into the fixture—and let’s not forget the positioner! We learned the hard way how a positioner’s lifespan can be truncated by a poorly grounded fixture.
During the early stages of developing our RT1 cobot welding table, an arc shot through the ungrounded fixture and actually extracted the table’s nitride splatter resistance!
Corrosion points exist wherever arc flash emits from the base materials into the fixture. To protect against that corrosion, the fixture must be grounded through the table, directly on the part, or with strong contacts that connect directly to the bar.
Tell us your current grounding process if you have one; either way, we’ll make sure your fixture includes an easy grounding method so you don’t make the same mistake we made!
9. Can you benefit from automated clamping?
For customers seeking to scale a welding fixture’s productivity, we recommend incorporating automated clamping mechanisms into the fixture’s design. Equipping a fixture with auto-clamping does increase its upfront cost—sometimes significantly—but you’ll quickly recover your investment through gains in part volume and automation goals.
Kinetic’s automated clamps are designed to handle electromagnetic interference (EMI), arc current, corrosive gases, intense infrared light, heat, and flame. From design to delivery, we emphasize doing the work correctly the first time around to ensure uninterrupted quality and safety from every product, for every customer.
10. How many parts do you make?
The size of your average production run influences your fixture’s design. As you can imagine, a few hundred parts per month impacts a fixture’s longevity significantly less than several thousand parts per month! When we know your quantities, we can make informed decisions on clamping styles, materials, and other critical aspects of the fixture.
It Starts with You: The Future of Automation in Manufacturing
As manufacturers, we tend to discuss robotics and automation as distant concepts from a far-off future. But the truth is that “tomorrow’s” technological advancements are here now, and they’re currently revolutionizing our day-to-day work!
Kinetic’s 10 key questions may seem tedious and basic, but that’s because automation is not science fiction. It’s real, it’s complex, and when it’s done right, automation can radically improve your shop’s success!
Join the robotics revolution with a welding fixture built to suit your shop’s specialty services.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website Automatic Welding Positioner Factory.
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