Originally published in The Robot Report
Written by: Steve Crowe

Nowhere in manufacturing is the shortage of labor felt as urgently as in the welding sector, which is now facing an acute shortage of welders nationwide. The industry’s hiring challenge, combined with the struggle metal fabrication companies experience in producing quality parts quickly and in small runs, prompted Hirebotics to develop the BotX Welder.

The BotX Welder comes with the UR10e cobot arm, cloud connector, welder, wire feeder, MIG welding gun, weld table, and configurable user-input touch buttons. The customer provides wire, gas, and parts. Customers can teach BotX the required welds simply via an app on any smartphone or tablet using welding libraries created in world-class welding labs.

“Many people didn’t believe that collaborative robots could perform such heavy-duty tasks as welding,” said Rob Goldiez, co-founder of Hirebotics. “We realized the need of a solution for small- and medium-sized metal fabricators trying to find welders.”

Hirebotics addressed two major hurdles of robotic welding with the BotX Welder: the ease of programming and the ease in which a customer can obtain the system without assuming the risk of ownership. There are no installation costs with BotX and with cloud monitoring, manufacturers pay only for the hours the system actually welds.

“You can hire and fire BotX as your business needs dictate,” said Goldiez.

“We chose Universal Robots’ e-Series line for several reasons,” said Goldiez. “With Universal Robots’ open architecture, we were able to control, not only wire feed speed and voltage, but torch angle as well, which ensures a quality weld every time.”

PMI LLC in Wisconsin was one of the first customers to use the BotX Welder. “A large order would mean we need to hire 10-15 welders to fulfill it — and they’re just not out there,” said PMI VP of Operations Erik Larson. “We would No Bid contracts on a regular basis. With the BotX solution, we now quote that work and have been awarded contracts, so it has really helped grow our business.”

“Being able to simply hire the BotX Welder, and quickly switch between welds by using our smart phone — and only pay for the hours it works — is huge for us. It took our area lead, who had no prior robotics experience, half an hour to teach it how to weld the first part.”

“This now means we do not need to use certified welders to oversee the operation. As long as the cobot welder’s program is certified, any operator can tend the cobot welder. This really unlocks a lot of resources for us. Hirebotics and Universal Robots really hit the mark with this.”