The best welder in the industry

With surgical precision.

Welding steel may seem like a repetitive task but behind this process there is one of the greatest industrial demands in the world, now imagine transforming something that took 12 hours in just 45 minutes, with more quality, less human effort and almost no errors seems exaggerated because that was exactly what a company in the United States achieved by combining collaborative robotics and intelligent automation to build more than 5 km of metal fences.

This transformation shows how even the most traditional sectors of the industry are being taken over by a new generation of integrated systems and mechanical intelligence. The project was born from the urgent need to deliver metal fences for a gigantic bridge, but manufacturing each segment manually required 10 hours of intense work with more than 140 welding points in each one and the solution to be automated.

Another job less for humans

The company Seibel Modern joined forces with the systems integrator Properly Works to create an intelligent robotic cell that coordinates the welding arm with surgical precision instead of a simple robot. The system integrated sensors, hydraulic actuators, control panels and an interactive visual interface that easily guides even the least experienced operators.

The brain of the operation is a PLC programmable logic controller that orchestrates the movements of the robot, the hydraulic system, the safety devices and the human interface panel, everything is connected in real time with great precision and instant response. The robotic arm moves on a 2.7 meter linear axis guided by servomotors and position sensors. In each cycle the system calculates exactly where to start and finish each welding point and if it is necessary to pause, touch up or reprogram everything is done with a simple touch on the screen. A single robot became in 45 minutes what previously took up to 12 hours for human hands, and the number of reworks was reduced by half.