The Human Touch Hand-held welding is evolving to meet a faster, more precise world By Nestor Gula .........................................................................................................................................................................................
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elding automation is the hot ticket item these days with more and more robotic units being introduced by manufacturers and integrators. The benefits of automation and robotics is trumpeted loud and far. The truth of the matter is that traditional hand-held welding is still the primary method of welding metals together. “The lion’s share of every welding manufacturer’s sales is in TIG, engine-driven welder/generators and semi-automatic MIG welding equipment,” said Bruce Clark, Director, Marketing and Export Sales for Lincoln Electric Canada. “In terms of unit sales, the vast majority of the company’s equipment sales are intended for hand-held welding applications.” Tom Wermert, Senior Brand Manager at Victor Technologies said their sales of hand-held welders was “95 percent versus 5 percent for automated. Hand-held welding is used in all industries because there are instances that you just cannot automate the product because of the size or location.” Even though, in terms of volume, hand held welding absolutely dwarfs automated welding, “the amount of production from automated welding is much larger,” said Neil Armstrong, General Manager and VP of Operations for ESAB Canada. “When you think of robotic welding in a Magna plant, they are spitting out a couple of million parts a year. Whereas manual welding tends to be more custom made production.” Part of the reason that manual welding is still a huge factor in industry is that they carry much less capital costs and are simpler to implement and use. “You can buy a simple welder for about 400 dollars and an industrial welder for about 10,000 dollars. Where a robotic system would be at least 100,000 dollars,” he said. “The capital costs are magnitudes greater. With the robotic welder you have to understand how to program it and it is a totally different realm. However, automated welding will continue to grow because of the shortage of skilled workers.” The convenience and the speed of hand-held welding means that it will never be eliminated from the industrial realm. “Welding is still a tactile process. There is really no industry that has eliminated the need for hand-held welding,’ said Clark. “Production welding still has fit up, tack welding or repair. Every industry has maintenance departments.” In any welding process there are a lot of
variables that must be factored into the process. “Part size and variation from part to part play a huge role in determining if automation can be applied,” he said. “Think about a wind tower support structure. The size of the parts and the custom nature of the weldment drive the solution to semi-automatic welding. An aircraft carrier, with a seven year build cycle and hundreds of workers all over the site is only practical for hand-held welding. Infrastructure projects, like bridges, building erection, pipelines — all have a place for hand-held welding processes because of the sites, the part size and the customized nature of the parts.” While majority of all the work is still on manual the is going in the direction of automated welding according to Blain Parkinson, Director of Sales and Marketing at Fronius. “If you don’t have a lot of parts or similar pieces over and over again — manual welding is still needed,” he said. “We developed the TPSI — around some core improvement of the welding process. The user interacts with an industrial touch screen. There are simple instructions — even short instructional videos can be viewed on the welder.” As the skill set of new workers diminishes new welding systems must be implemented to catch and correct any errors. “In terms of welding what our customers have told us that beyond rugged quality machine which presents a value, they want a machine that is simple to operate,” said Armstrong. “They want a machine that is very intuitive and easy to set up. When you have that brain inside a welding machine you can build in algo-
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