Hosted by: American Machinist & New Equipment Digest
Sponsored by: Universal Robots
Featuring: Rob Goldiez, CEO of Hirebotics, and Will Healy III, Global Industry Segment Leader for Welding at Universal Robots

Metal fabricating businesses are increasingly adopting automation to address the skilled welder shortage. Small operations, in particular, need flexible tools to maintain low-volume, high-mix welding throughput.  Luckily, collaborative robots – easy to program, fast to deploy – are not only bridging the gap in the labor shortage but are boosting productivity, and typically reach ROI within a year.    In this webinar, Will Healy, Global Industry Segment Leader, Welding for Universal Robots, and Rob Goldiez, CEO from Hirebotics, will cover basic considerations when getting started with cobot welding. They will explore common product configurations and ROI scenarios and share case studies of metal fab shops utilizing cobots. Lastly, you’ll get to see a programming demo of the easy-to-use interface and see a weld run live!   

With nearly a dozen case studies from real fabricators, Rob & Will discuss stoires of how those fabshops have realized 2x to 10x productivity boosts, gaining more engaged welders, finding consistency in production and more. Attendees will learn:  

• The basics of collaborative robot technology and how to get started  
• Common deployment considerations for welding with cobots  
• Real-world case studies of manufacturers boosting productivity with collaborative robots  

This webinar was recorded in August 2023 in partnership with the companies Endeavor Media, New Equipment Digest, American Machinist, Universal Robots & Hirebotics.

Transcript:

hello and welcome to today’s new equipment digest and American machinist webinar titled getting started with cobot welding sponsored by Universal robots

I’m Robert Brooks I’m the editor and content director of American machinist before we begin let me explain how you can participate in today’s presentation first if at any time you’re having audio difficulties or slides are not advancing simply hit your F5 key to refresh the webcast console if you’re running popup blocking software you will need to disable it to view the webinar if you have any technical difficulties during today’s session please press the question mark help button in the upper right corner to receive assistance in solving common issues this webinar technology allows you to resize the presentation by clicking the maximize icon in the upper right corner to enlarge the window we welcome your questions duringtoday’s event to submit your questions simply type a question into the ask aquestion window on the left side of the screen and then hit the submit button we’ll be answering as many questions as possible during the Q&A session that will follow the main presentation but please feel free to send in your questions at any time and we’ll add them to the queuebe sure to check out the resources area on your console for information provided by Universal Robotics and higherrobotics also please be aware that today’s session is being recorded and it will be available on the new equipmentdigest and American machinist websites within the next day for you to review you will be notified by emailwhen the archive is available when the webinar ends pleasetake a moment to complete the feedback form that will appear on yourscreen now I want to welcome our speakers will Healey III is globalindustry segment manager for welding with universal robotics pteridine a Purdue University mechanicalengineer who loves to share his passion for automation will is a leader at Universal Robotics and with the advancedmanufacturing industry partnership in Cincinnati he speaks from 16 years ofpersonal experience about people Centric technology Investments managing culture change in organizations Bridging the manufacturing skills Gap and creating through automation follow Will on YouTube Twitter X and Linkedin with the handle will automate Rob Goldiez is co-founder andCEO of Hirebotics as CEO and co-founder of hirebotics Rob leads his teams as they design and develop tools tools to improve the productivity usability and affordability of collaborative robotsystems H robotics entered the welding automation space in 2019 as a key collaborator in the development of a nearly cobot welding system in 20120 h robotics launched Beacon a power robot software platform with support for applications remote monitoring and 247 Global support functionality for more information about speakers check out the speaker details tab on your console with that welcome to both of you will the floor isyours awesome thanks Robert really appreciate it so uh I’m really glad everybody is here today thank you for joining us and thanks to Rob uh for co-presenting with me and we’re reallyexcited to share with you today uh about Automation and about collaborative welding and the value that can come from collaborative welding so the first place that I I like want to start is why collaborative welding why is this something that that we’re talking about and is really growing really quickly in the industry and has so much uh so much momentum and so when we look at collaborative welding it’s because there are some major challenges that we’re facing inside uh the the metal working space and specifically inside of welding itself generally speaking we’re lookingat Workforce shortages everywhere uh the the sensus reports 10,000 Boomers a day are retiring 10,000 Boomers a day are retiring and so that is having a major impact on our workforces and you’re probably seeing that in your own companies or in your own customers andthen we’re looking at things like uh 360,000 new welders are needed accordingto the WS on their Workforce their welding Workforce website 360,000 newwelders will be needed by 27 and about 990,000 new welding jobs will be postedevery year including 23 uh from now until 27 and so 990,000 new welders areneeded and uh our schools are not graduating that and so that’s a major labor challenge for us in the UnitedStates and it’s a major welding is a major labor challenge around the world because this isn’t just someone that’sflipping uh running a frier at Wendy’s uh yesterday and they don’t become a welder the next day you know this is askilled task and a skilled job and then when we look at the bureau and Labor Statistics data the the June data wasreported here on August 1st and so the first half year is in and there are 1.1 million unfilled manufacturingtransportation and warehouse jobs and the interesting thing is is that’s 1.1million in our space but there’s 1.8 million unfill jobs in the retailaccommodation and Food Service space and there’s another 1.8 million unfilled jobs in um hotel or in uh hospitals andhealth care and social assistance and there’s 9.6 million unfilled jobs in the United States and so this there areWorkforce shortages everywhere and so we’ve we’ve really got to think about how are we making our places aninteresting place to work and then when we look at our businesses we’re havingnegative impacts on our business by not having our talent pipeline filled I have many many manufacturers tell me thatthey’ve had a Turn Away business because the job required 10 welders and they only have six full-time welders and theyhave a hard time keeping those six positions filled or they just don’t have enough capacity or throughput or the thequality expectations are too high um and so there’s a lot of different things you know when we have idle machines or wehave idle Bays or we have idle equipment that doesn’t have an operator at it that doesn’t have a welder at it that doesn’thave someone working that machine that that is having a negative impact on our business it’s making our lead timeslonger it’s raising our overtime costs on per part uh costs because of overtimeand and weekend work and so we’ve got to think about how do we Implement andinvest to in our talent pipeline so that we can run our business and we cangrow and so uh you know the other thing that’s really a challenge in this space is welding isn’t the easiest job this isa this is a repetitive task even in smaller volumes you know if you’ve got aweld a 6 inch straight line 200 times that’s a pretty boring task um it’s alsoyou know you got the hood on and all the gear this is a dark and dirty task maybe the welder themselves doesn’t care abouthow dirty they are but maybe their spouse and their family care about them coming home dirty and all that extratime to at at the end of a shift that they have to take to clean up and and uhand up from the work and then also it’s dangerous work you know there’s hot sparks flying through the air thingscatch on fire we hope not but it happens and you know uh there’s there’s lots of other things that are going on in therelike lifting big heavy metal parts and positioning heavy metal parts and uh bending over a table for multiple hoursa day causing repetitive stress injuries and so there’s this is a task that’s pretty physical and could be challengingfor a lot of welders and so what can we do to beat this kind of chaos and production welding from not havingenough people and having to turn away business and from the the job being pretty physical and challenging and thenjust having shortages in total it really comes down to how can you amplify yourwelders and you can do it with cobot welding and cobot Welding has this really interesting opportunity as a toolfor welders to really boost their productivity and to help them be more productive and to help focus them onwork that they want to do you know welders want to do they want to solve problems they want to do creative things and sothose 200 straight line 6inch welds those are things that a a cobot doesvery well and that allows your welder to focus on prepping the next part or doing a quality inspection on the part or umor doing having doing a more complex weld that maybe um you you want thewelder doing while the cobot does some of the the other welds that are more boring and so this can amplify thewelders in the productivity uh it can it can boost the consistency of how many parts you make per shift there’s a lotof opportunities for how we can do that with collaborative welding and so whatis in a solution um we’re going to show you and and Rob’s going to demonstrate live for you in a couple minutes what uhwhat the high robotics collaborative welding system looks like and how it works but there are basically four maincomponents inside a system to make it work and it’s the cobot the the universal robot you see that there andthen you have the uh the work area where it’s going to work and the tooling and fixtures that you’re required to makethat happen and then the dress out kit with the torch and the and the pipe and the wire feeder and the power source andand all those kinds of pieces to make the robot into a welder and then the software to make it work and that’sthat’s really the magic here with the H robotic solution and so with the software for teaching the path and thenfor controlling the power source as well like the the esab power source you’re going to you’re going to see today andso when we look at what collaborative welding is doing it’s this valuable tool that’s amplifying your welders and it’sexpanding their productivity uh we see time and time again it raises the arc time for shift 2x 4X 10x we have somecase studies we’re going to talk about in a minute we we uh we drive production consistency uh improving the product theproduct quality reducing the grinding and the rework cues no one shows up to work thinking I want to grind partstoday and then you know transferring those doll repetitive tasks to the cobot and making it more predictable for youhow many parts is that weld shop how much Arc time am I going to get today how many arcs am I going to strike todaythat’s that’s really important for being able to predict the output of your of your production and to make you profitable and then it also and this isreally valuable increases welder engagement and retention and we see that a lot in the stories it reduces thephysical demands reduces the exposure to hazards like uh smoke uh coming out ofINF fume coming out of the welding process and it focuses the welder to the creative and challenging tasks and keepsthem more engaged and that’s going to help you retain more welders and so we’ve always embraced newTools in work when we look at like a uh anybody who’s assembled an IKEA system right if you’re using a little wrenchthat’s really torturous right when you have to put together 200 screws by hand with a little wrench right you getcalluses on your fingers and you’re just really tired and it’s it’s training and so we have screwdrivers and we havetorque guns and we have we have ethernet controllable torque guns and we have invested in technology over time in ourprocesses to make it easier for the worker to make the worker more efficient to help the quality of the installationand that we get the right torque rating on the on the assembly we have always embraced new Tools in work and this is anew tool for you to really amplify your welders and help them be more productiveand to really Drive engagement with them so all of this is really nice in theoryyou know how does it work in the real world and Rob and I prepared 10 stories to share this with you and I’m gonna letRob talk about each of these stories uh briefly as as we go through them so Robum you want to talk about D’Angelo yep thanks will I appreciate it um and feel free to jump in if you think I’ve missedanything on here but you know D’Angelo Marine company in South Florida that makes exhaust systems for the Marineindustry the yacht industry been TIG welding these parts for many many many years andyou know was fascinated with this cobot uh welding um you know Revolution that’shappening and you know what’s interesting about D’Angelo is a few things right one is they moved from a TIG welding process to a MIG weldingprocess and got about 10x Improvement in productivity by moving from a TIGwelding process to a MIG welding process and the other piece is that they don’t have any robots on the floor and so asthey were doing the evaluation process to look at cobot welding they went to all the experts out there with alldifferent types of systems and things like that and what what the those folkscouldn’t weld their parts like they could and so what was key to them being successful with the cobal welder thatthat they have is putting something in the hands of their welders that their welders could use so they know how toweld their parts they understand TIG welding MIG welding and they uh have a very easyto use system that’s highlyproductive and embraced by their team forward to the next one yep did I did Idouble forward there you go suan Fab uh they’ve been a longtimeuser of our technology and have three systems on their floor uh they started with one they were extremely productivewith it and as their business grew due to being able to solve some of these labor pain points around welding theysaw an opportunity to grow their business with more systems and so they’re a customer that started with one which is very and as they becameproductive they added more to their Fleet we’ll go forward to the next onewill y thank you so um IMS in South Carolinathey’re A supplier into the heavy equipment industry and have tons ofexperience with traditional robot programming traditional robots um you know these are the big robots that arein cages because they’re not safe to be around and once they got their hand on a couple of the cobots and even Benchmarkthem against uh other robots that companies that have gotten into the cobot space they found the software andease of use of the universal robots and high robotic system to be far easier and far superior and so they have a coupleof systems that they Empower their welders with they’re connected they can take the tablet which you’ll see in a second and walk between different robotsthat they have from us to teach different parts support their their their operators um wherever they are intheir facility what I love about this story is they they’ve used traditional robots and theyuse this and they just they love how approachable the programming is of of this collaborative welding solutionversus the traditional welding I mean it says in the quote there you know multiple hours to get a a part runningversus 10 to 20 minutes and that that’s just huge that’s that’s really incredible yeah and for for them tooright SP floor space is always a constraint in any manufacturing facility and their parts are you know tabletopsize maybe a little bit bigger but when if you’re trying to do those parts on traditional robots you’ve got a lot offloor space a lot of caging and things like that to deal with and you can fit a lot more collaborative systems into thesame floor space that you can fit a traditional system oh great point I didn’t even think ofthat okay Athena manufacturing out of Texas yep Athena manufacturing down inAustin Texas um they Supply into a lot of different Industries but semiconductor industry is one of theirbig ones and semiconductor industry as we all know with the chips act and stuff like that with reshoring has driven aton of investment capital investment into the semiconductor industry in establishing these Fab sites in the USand so Athena’s business has been growing they have traditional robots doing traditional welding withtraditional robots and sanding and other applications they even have Ur cobots doing other applications but when itcomes to welding and and the effort to get welding productive right having a apartner that has soft that makes it easy to use was key so Athena another customer they started with one theystarted to bid on more jobs and more um opportunities beyond what their single cobot could do now they have foursystems they have external positioners that they’ve helped uh design and incorporate into the system to do verylarge Parts with two robots and a lot of smaller parts as well this is a great example of theywere Turning Away business because they didn’t have enough welders and they weren’t able to do it and what I really thought was interesting is because ofhow easy the solution is you’re going to show they were able to take people who didn’t even know welding that didn’tknow how to use a robot and teach them as operators to operate the system andand produce parts and so they were able to actually make more parts and acceptmore business because of of this investment and I thought that was really interesting and not that it waseliminating welders jobs but that um you know we can’t find welders and so it wasan opportunity to have the welder kind of oversee the production versusjust arcing all day that’s right that’s right um next next company Swift metalthis is a customer down in Australia and so you know High robotics is based in the us but we sell all over NorthAmerica and internationally as well and so this is a customer uh internationally in Australia and what’s interesting isyou know we all tend to be very locally focused we think about the us we think about you know if you’re Indiana what’sgoing on in my local market but these labor shortage problems are everywhere and so as companies globally evaluatehow do they solve their their labor challenges you know cobal welding continues to pop up and you know ourbelief our strong belief is that ease of use will drive the day because a lot of these customers are first-timeautomation users and firsttime automation users are trying to drisk what their investment is and the bestway to do that is through an easy to use system and you’re going to see in a few minutes as will mentioned I’m going to go through I’m going to share screen andwe’re going to teach some parts so you can see how easy it is everybody throws around ease of use it’s very easy tojust say oh we’ve got an easy to use system uh traditional robot companies do it and then you watch videos and it’s very complicated very few companiesactually show you what it takes to set up apart go through the process of teaching it tweaking it and we’re g to do thattoday yeah and I love the quote here that that was shared by by reyen becausehe talks about you know they they got it because of improved cycle times but then they realized it also helped improve theweld quality and the consistency of the production and how many parts they were making each day and I thought that wasreally powerful so um you know you may justify it with one Roi but it’s going to bring many other points of valueBeyond just a a productivity bonus yeah for sure for sure PMI up in Wisconsin umthey were actually I think maybe the first user of our cobot technology or cobal welding technology back in early2019 so sometimes people ask as you know new to about welding how long have you been doing this or how long have thesebeen out there H and we’re one of the first to be doing this uh PMI has been out there since early 2019 you knowrunning uh welding systems they have traditional welding robots they have other Ur applications elsewhere but it’sso easy and Powerful that that they continue to bid on more work with withmore uh cobal welding Solutions next one awesomeYep skivington is a great great case study with our partners at esab uh it’s a Canadian company and they they werelooking into cobal welding they they struggled you know this the story for all of these is the same we cannot findpeople to weld the parts we need to weld we cannot find and keep skilled welders that’s where it starts that’s the entrypoint and they get all these other benefits so skivington was literally tens of thousands of Parts behind on aon a job that they were doing for one of their customers and when they got intoduced to the to the cobot the ESOPcobot it’s the version of our system that you see behind me they they literally took it that day they askedthe um they they wanted that demo system the next day it showed up on their site it wasn’t the one that they were buying but they’re like I need this and overthe course of that next 30 days they produced all the parts that they needed they got caught up on a job that theywere prepared to tell their customer they were behind uh and you know they’re just emphatically you know happy and andlove it how productive how easy it was for them to be productive so quickly I think that’s a story and you know theweld quality is going to be important to to folks like this because they’re making retail displays and Store Fixtures right and so these are thingsthat are going out in the commercial space where where people in in society are seeing it and so looks going tomatter on those kinds of products and so I’m sure that got them excited too that the quality was going to be there thatthey were looking for for sure for sure uh so Spectre metal craft in insalinaa Kansas they have two systems actually two sister companies in the same town um another success story rightthey have traditional robots they wanted something that was easy to use production was important they couldn’t find welders to your point will umQuality and consistency matters and uh they’re just you know one of those manycustomers that are just thrilled with how quickly they can get up to speed um here you see uh Thomas asking a questionin support and so we’ll show that today you know this is not just making a robot go from point A to point point B butit’s the entire experience which includes what do you do when you have questions how easy is it to get in touch with somebody how easy is it to getanswers and so all those things sort of break down the barriers and drisk an investment in cobot welding love it andI and I love the quote here about you know being able to increase profits by just cutting out overtime and actuallycutting overtime makes the quality of life of the welder better right and so this is this is a really awesome storyit’s it’s a great one good uh I don’t ought to say this three designs I thinkyeah this is a this is a system that was developed in conjunction with a partnerof ours kinetic um kinetic is a great uh partner that um has tons of experiencein welding but also into fixturing and fixture designs and they have an awesome um rt1 kind of manipulator that can spinlarger parts or have like an aside bside um and it can be incorporated into the cobot today and so they’re a greatpartner that has deployed you know several of these out and around andsometimes people kind of can’t Envision well how do I put my part on this table and they’ve done some amazing work withcustomers that have large parts that are complex that need to be repositioned andand take advantage of our easyto use software to to handle that yeah there’s some great videos online if you if youlook for that rt1 from kinetic Technologies there’s there’s some great big Parts being made on tables so yeahdefinitely Google that and then last but certainly not least yeah Advanta great longtime customer hastwo facilities one in South Carolina one in Michigan they produce parts that go into the automotive industry not in carparts but um kind of supplying and material handling up to the line they do work for Tesla and other companies likethat and they started out small I think they started with two systems they’re now more than have more than 20 systemsacross your two facilities um one of the powerful things that we’ll touch on a little bit when I go through this demois the nature of the software allows them to share Parts between facilities between robots using that same tabletinterface and so no USB sticks to back stuff up and how do I get this file to that that robot over there um and sothis has been a great story where automation has help them bid on and win more work and grow theirbusiness yeah and I and I love the service I mean you’re going to talk about service but you can see here theyonly had to use it twice and they were back and running within 30 minutes just through the app they were able tointerface with the the H robotics crew I thought that was a really great story because production time is is reallyvaluable time right so great great story too so Rob I’m gonna turn off my camerahere and I’m gonna I’m gonna highlight your video so people want to blow your video up you’re gonna run a live demo ofof collaborative welding for us right I am yep thanks will um so one of thethings I want to say and like you know will uh did his his presentation sort of leading up to this but this shortage ofskilled welders has been going on for a long time and I I remember there’s a 1998 American Welding Society study thatemphasized and highlighted one of the concerns that manufacturers had in the 90s was the shortage of skilled weldersthe Aging Workforce all the same things themes and and I point this out only because robots have been around for along time cobots are newer to the scene but these problems haven’t been solved right so the traditional method ofsolving these problems for manufacturers hasn’t solved the problem the problem exists still today and it’s only gottenworse so what you’re going to see here I’m going to share the screen so you can watch what I’m doing you’re going to see me Teach some parts we’ve got a littlesample over here where we’re going to do a live demo most of the time we don’t even weld in these demos because peopleunderstand that you know esab or Miller whatever power source they get with our system they know how to join metal sothis is a story really about how easy is the software to use and can I Empower my people with it it’s one thing to watch avideo on YouTube of a robot doing something but the real story is how did you make it do that how did the softwareenable someone to make it do that so we’re going to walk through that now um hopefully you can see my video I’m goingto share a tablet that I have so just as a quick background our software wedevelop it in-house it runs on iOS devices I’ve got an iPad Mini here Android web you bring your owntechnology whatever your welders are comfortable with this is the first layer breaking down the barriers you hand ateach pendant to a welder and now you know sometimes their eyes can glaze back they might have to go offon some training even as easy as robots have gotten to use and Universal robots have gotten to use we break down anotherbarrier by giving them a tablet that they’re already comfortable with anybody can use an iPad so we’re using an iPadhere um few things I’ll point out as I run through this demo across the bottom we can see a few different tabs I’ve gota Home tab customers can see these are on some demo robots but they can create their own charts and chart cycle timeand consumables used and all sorts of things like that whatever is important to them we’re looking at this on an iPadbut they some customers put a big screen up in their shop maybe the owner wants to be able to monitor things from homethey got the flexibility to do that we’re going to spend our time on the robot tab where we have severaldifferent robots here we’re using the eso demo so I’m going into that screen right now to see all the different partsthat we’ve caught we’re going to teach a new part here now a few things I’ll point out especially if you’re new to tocollaborative robots um this is safe to be around I can walk up to it I can move the robot around by pressing a button onthe back side of what we call the puck there’s two buttons here the top one when I press it allows me to hand guidethe robot so welders could do the same thing I’m doing and move the robot into position and the bottom button is goingto interact with the software all motion is always initiated from this button box that we call it oran operator box that’s wired into the robot with an EOP of play button Arc off on Arc onoff switch so we’re just goingto go through and teach a part that I’ve got here set up like this it’s got a few different pieces of geometry to it anduh we’ll go through and teach it and so I’m going to hit the blue circle button in the bottom right I’m going to givethis part a name this is typically the hardest part of the demo what do I call this part but a customer would give it apart number a drawing number something that they would want to uh recall it later we’ll just call it webinar I’musing the 22 degree short Goose I set set that up now I can if a customer hassaved weld procedures into a library you can easily pick some settings from a library I’ll just say use these settingsthose are my defaults and now we’re ready to teach welds now the data showsthat most people are teaching linear welds and air moves so we prompt the user to start with linear welds you canalways change it to different type of motion but we’re now going to hit the button and we’re going to bring the robot intoposition and we’re going to click that blue button to teach our first point so I just taught my first linear weld justby clicking that blue button I’m going to move it to the next Point click the blue button to teach my next positionI’m going to move it to the bottom here teach my nextposition and then I’m going to the last Point here now I haven’t taught any air moves I haven’t taught approach pointsthe software figures all that out on its own we can always add that later if we need to but I’m going to hit save nowsimilar to Apple music and Spotify we have a concept called the playlist and so what’s on the playlist is what the robot’s going to run when we press playyou can have one part on your playlist like I just taught here and I’m going to create a playlist with with this part but you can teach Parts independentlythrow them onto a playlist just like songs in a music app and you can run different parts sequentially to to torun aside bside or three different parts if you want to so we’ve taught this to run we told the robot we want to run itthe arc is off we’re not trying to weld this part here I’m going to press play and we’ll see cycle throughthis now the speed at which is traveling the torch angles that I gave it are all what I kind of handu guided it to thetravel speed is in those settings that I had when when I chose that Library setting and it’s going through thedifferent points right now which we can follow along in the software now as it’s going through that I’ll point out a few different things just in the interest oftime on any of these points we could tap on it and we can see the weld procedure for those points we’re in a pulseprocess we’ve got a 22 inch perm minute travel speed trim is set to zero wire feed speed 400 for any taau point we cango through and tweak those settings now it Departed the Weld and it went to its default home position now I can just aseasily make this more sophisticated by tapping the magic wand hitting the plusto teach some more points at the end maybe I need to have an air move here because I need to weld the backside ofthe part next so I can switch to air move just by pressing and holding in the blue button it lets me toggle the airmove and we just taught an air move I can toggle back and I can switch back and teachpoints on the back side and we’ll just do like that for nowand we’ll hit save so very easily I can add to my part I can teach a much more complicated part I can press and holdone of the icons because I want to skip part of the Weld and just have it go from there go to the air move and do thebackside notice again it’ll depart the Weld and it’ll go to its home position so very easy to interact with this youknow we’re running this on an iPad and it’s going to go home so nowI’ll answer the question that people always ask I got to see it well I got to see it Spark so we’re going to teach a little part over here got just a littlelap joint so I’m going to go back and teach a new part we’ll see how I do here I’ll saywebinar two hit next choose those samesettings so now I’m going to come inhere I will teach my first point I’ll come overteach my second point we can do a dry run if we want to see itagain we can even do something what we call step mode so if we want to go step bystep stops at the points I can look at where the torch is if I wanted to make any changes I can move the robot aroundfrom this point I could recapture that point if I needed to make an adjustment but if I’m happy with it I could play itthrough step step by step but we want to see it weld CUpeople want to see can the welding companies join material they can I promise this it’ll go home so now I’mgoing to move out of the way get into a safe area behind the screen I’ve got the operator box over here I’m going to turn the key switch on and we’re going to hit the play button seewell [Music]so pretty easy to run the system um few other things I’ll pointout real quick just and then we’ll kind of get to some Q&A I mentioned this earlier customers sometimes havequestions they want to reach out different than any other system out there they can drag it open to the sidethey can hit support within support can we see this can’ttell I think we can see this might have I can see it in there we can search knowledge articles oops we can um reach out and ask questions by sending a a message in and we’re really proud of this but if you have any questions you can reach out in under two minutes you’re going to hear from us and so very fast response time when you have questions and and uh um want to reachout to a human and get some answers so with that will we uh we can open it up to questions yeah and I I just have a a little bit uh more just to wrap upthanks for that demo Rob that’s that was really amazing um I think what’sincredible is how quickly you taught two parts with three different paths in like14 minutes I think more or less is is what you did and you were actually livewelding apart there and I think the power of this right to be able to go through and and set that up and if youhave consistent um if you have standard kind of uh setups that you normally haveand certain speeds and and gas mixtures and those things you can have all those pre-loaded there so it’s even fasterright that’s that’s what you’re kind of showing at the beginning yeah that’s awesome okay so I I want to uh switchover quickly to just a few slides wrap it up and then we’ll dive into the questions there’s some some nicequestions in here but the first thing I just want to point out is the welder is that the center of all of this rightthey know what speed it needs to go and they know what are what’s the setup of the power source that we need and socollaborative welding tools are not replacing the welder it really needs the welder and it needs someone with thewelding knowledge to make it happen it needs their skills and and theirunderstanding and and all those things but it’s really amp ifying what they’re doing and it’s and it’s making them amore contributing member to the organization I love this picture here I forget which company this is from Robbut you know this is one person operating two robots at the same time that’s right yeah that’s advant sothat’s two of their systems one of their welders right no experience with automation but he can load and go onmultiple systems that is awesome like really powerful and I I think that’s just a really uh powerful part of thisis It’s really enabling that welder to run two arcs at the same time how many welders can hold two torches at the sametime and do welds right like that’s and what are the quality of those welds that they do it um and then you know when wetalk to experience welders when we we interview them and and we get it you know the one of the biggest things Ihear is this extends their career people who are so tired and exhausted they justthey don’t think they can do it anymore and you still need welders but you don’t want them to retire this is aninvestment to keep them around for three five 10 more years because they don’thave to do the physical parts of the job they it can help extend their careers push out their retirements a little bitand help you keep your productivity levels without losing that that welder because they can’t do the physical partsof the job anymore and experience welders tells things like it gives them more energy and they they have betterwork life balance um it it produces at their quality expectations and and whatthey expect to be done and it’s their work when they’re teaching the the robot to do this and it it allows them to tofocus on more creative and more challenging work and not just do 200 pieces of a six inch straight line Weldand then you know when we talked to early career welders people new to welding what this does for them is youknow it stops all the Mindless welds that 200 pieces in a six 2,000 pieceseven in a a 6 inch straight line young young welders get the the lessinteresting jobs usually right so it gets rid of that kind of mindless work that they’re that they’re there and theyaren’t doing as much overwheling so they don’t have to do as much grinding and so they have it really it also empowersthem to feel like they’re contributing more to the organization and to be responsible for more in the organizationright I run robots and I run welding robots and I teach welding robots um it allows them to have that feel of moreresponsibility that young people are always looking for in organizations and then when we talk to Business Leadersthere’s lots of interesting things they tell us things like reducing impact of the skill shortage and um you knowbetter planning of the production levels being more consistent day-to-day and allowing them to know how much Ark timeare they going to have each day reduces the operator fatigue and and potential chances for injury and it reduces wastewhich is which is a big deal and and eliminates just post- weld grinding no one wants to grind anything and sothat’s really something that that people don’t want to do and something that uhthat you know really if there’s an opportunity to reduce that eliminate that that’s there and Business Leadersgo on and tell us all kinds of things like it removes bottlenecks you know a lot of times the weld shops the bottleneck or it fills gaps where theyhave traditional robots they have manual welding but sometimes it doesn’t makesense to set up on the traditional robot but they wish they had something that was better than having a manual welder well 2,000 of the same Parts um you knowit fits that really nice Gap and we hear over and over again this implements really fast with a strong return oninvestment calculation at an affordable price for for shops of all sizes and andhear that over and over again as we interview people and ultimately you know it enables you to be productive evenwhen you have open welder positions and all of us have open welder positions right now and it and it really thenhelps your company to boost your productivity and ultimately your your profitability so just a refresher thatyou know collaborative welding is this tool augmenting your welders that expands the manual welder productivityit raises the ark time it drives production consistency and the predictability of the output of the weldshop as well as the quality of of the Weld and it’s really increasing the welder engagement and your retention ofwelders and even attracting welders to your shop to to make that job more interesting and that they want to stayin working with you and so um hirebotics robs with hobo XS you know really Hrobotics is trying to make welding cobots easy easy that you don’t need experts you don’t need robotics peopleto do it they are absolutely the industry first welding cobot that has this you know intuitive smartphonetablet app that you saw today really cool and um they make a commitment on their site industrial grade weldingcobot systems shipped within two weeks and running parts and hours and you heard that over and over again in the stories that that we were talking aboutand the two minutes of response time through the app is just um that’s incredible Rob you’re able to helppeople get running quickly that that’s really powerful yeah it’s it’s one of those things that we tell people likeyou just mentioned Austin and they at the first time they have a question it could be where does this go or how do Iset this up or uh you know how do I do radio welds they just get blown away that they get answers in minutes BlownAway not hours not tomorrow not 30 minutes uh just answers right there right right away so sorry to jump inthere yeah awesome and I mean Rob if you want you know you watch this and you think someone in your organization needsto see it scan that that QR code there or or hit the bitly or go to the high robotics website they have a nice linkto schedule a demo and and to be able to see it for yourself with your questions and your specific uh conversation with hrobotics um they’ve got a really nice uh then they also have a really nice blog that’s available about getting startedwith cobot welding where they answer a lot of really nice questions and the blog and a very easy to read and followformat um so make sure you check out those two things and Universal robots II you know that’s that’s really I got to talk about it you you are is really the market leader for collaborative weldingwe are on our fifth generation of of cobot and we are doing actively weldingCentric developments for the cobot which is is really unique in the cobot space um there are many cobots out there butUr has had a lot of experience in this Rob mentioned you know collaborative welding is is not new we have more thanfive plus years experience you heard 2018 from Rob so it’s it’s really a longtime and this is more than any other robot company most other cobots uh have entered this space only in the last yearand so we have a lot of experience that means we have 50 plus local partners and integrators available around the worldhirebotics is is expanding their their reach and availability and and eventhrough esab Network and then there’s hundreds of years of welding experience in our community as well as manypartners offering components to go nearby this like uh maybe another cobotfor loading the cell with a gripper or something and then we have thousands of successfully deployed cobot weldersaround the world in virtually every country and in many many different Industries and applications fromsemiconductor to to the automotive industry to uh to mobile equipment andand even food and and food equipment so there’s a lot of really interesting places where our cobot has ended up andUr is an organization we want to create this world where people work with robots not like robots we want to get rid ofthose those physically challenging tasks and focus people on using their brains not their brones right that’s that’sreally the trick and so if you’re interested in collaborative welding Roi calculator um we have a tool that we canshare with you that to calculate a return on investment if you’re looking for that but remember it’s not always about the productivity return oninvestment it’s also about that quality level and the predictability of the output and how much Arc time you geteach day and it’s also about that return on investment on retaining welders and what are you doing to expand the um theengagement with your welders and retain your welders better but uh I have that tool and you can you can uh send it tome so um we’re going to move on to the question and answer part of it so Robert I am G to turn it back over to you andlet you leave the end of the webinar here thanks will and thanks Rob uhthat’s been a great presentation uh a few of our listeners uh viewers have already submitted their questions andwe’re going to jump to those right away um but as a reminder I want to askeveryone please take a moment to complete the feedback form that will appear on your screen at the end of thewebinar uh so uh questions uh let’s begin uh what do I do when somethinggoes wrong with this solution am I on my own so good good question uh the answeris no uh we get questions all the time through support uh sometimes people are literally just sending us message toshow off something that they’ve done you can request features and enhancements but um we empower the operator wherethey’re at standing next to the cobot the same device that they’re using to teach parts and run the system if theyhave any questions at all what whatsoever they reach out an app they hear back inminutes okay uh what kind of welding project is best to start out with umit’s going to vary from customer to customer we we see on average people run about 40 to 50 different part numbers oneach cobot that they have so unlike you know some other automation applications where they’re trying to justify on asingle part number it’s a little different here so um we typically recommend starting with smaller partswhere there’s not necessarily even high volume but you know I run a 100 this week I run 50 of those next week somesort of mix like that and those are really easy to set up and get going and then as people get these they get intomore complicated um and advanc teaching of Parts but we usually say start with one or two ones that arestraightforward that you run on a regular basis and uh you’ll see how quickly you can get up and running on those and it it’s kind of land andexpand from there uh for large Parts uh and theexample offered is construction equipment uh Mainframe structures uh what strategy should betaken to implement cobat welding yeah so so um we’re happy to youknow get on a virtual demo with you and kind of talk about your specific Parts but I’ll say we have customers Athena wasone where they do large frames and large is all relative right some people large is you know 10 feet and some peoplelarge is 20 feet or 50 feet but um Athena is a great example where they have four different cobots and when theyrun their this larger frame that goes into the semiconductor industry they can’t reach it with one system and sothey have two cobots that sort of work together that they taught and so they’ve got a table set up that allows them to put larger Parts between two cobots andrun them the other thing I’d point out and Fabtech is right around the corner so if you’re not coming you should comebut uh you are has been uh teasing us all right with the ur20 and we’refinally ready you know not just us but Ur is GNA have it we’re GNA have it come to Fabtech um the ur20 this is the ur10it’s got a 1300 millimeter reach we generally tell people just for easy discussion you got about a 48 inchusable reach because you want to have a good torch angle but the ur20 it’s pushing 69 inches of usual reach in alldirections and so we’re going to have it at Fabtech come by and visit um to do even larger parts or have two of thoseworking together uh this questioner uh startswith a quotation from one of the case studies it’s the future of smallwelds uh what about seventh axis rail systems or leap frogging with thesesystems yeah I mean you can get pretty Advanced if you want to there’s partners that have seventh access systems kineticis one that can help design something like that um we don’t typically recommend people start there becausewhat we don’t want to see and you don’t want to see is um people have lots of ideas when it comes to automation what if I did this with a robot what if I didthat you can absolutely do that with universal robots and our system but you want the best path for success is startwith the easy stuff and expand from there you can absolutely put on a seventh axis that you can have positioners connected to it um you cando all sorts of wild stuff but um it’s not just for small welds the small welds are the obvious the obviousones what is the range on the cobot arms yeah so this this is about a 1300millimeter or it is a 1300 millimeter reach like I said we generally guide people to about 48 inches of useablereach because torch angle is important but don’t be um don’t be confused by the table size here we can easily teachthings that have go off the table we can have parts that come off in this direction and so that reach of the robotin this case 48 in is in all directions like like your arm having a 48 inchreach and then the ur20 is going to be about 69 inches of useable reach yeah it’s definitely a radius nota circumference right or or U diameter yeah yeahyeah uh can you program curve welding and how ABS absolutely so on that inthat teach panel that I said we start with linear wealth because that’s the data shows that’s the most common all wehave to do is drop it down and switch to radial as we call it at least three points and you’re just teaching themaround a circle or a curve you could do more than three but you need at least three points um and some people ask justbecause other brand cobots struggle with small parts but I mean we could do this the head of this uh shoulder bolt if wewanted to small circles no problem um but but very easy you just switch to radial and teach yourpoints uh realistically how quickly can I get fromorder to production what’s an example of worst case and bestcase so let’s say you said this is fantastic I want one of these you couldplace an order uh depending on inventory level we usually say about one week till till it ships but sometimes it’s one dayum you know we build a standard product when this lands on your floor it’s going to take about an hour hour and a half toset it up this everything from the table down is wired ready to go on a pallet the arm is in a safe box collapse downdrop in four bolts put the dress back on put the puck on 45 minutes you’re up andrunning and um teaching your first parts and you know you could be you could be running production parts that afternoonno question does the equipment offer crashprevention safety features yeah so this is you know we we we we talk about cobots and sometimes well we take thisfor granted right the cobal will stop if it collides right so this is a huge benefit for for welding um you know I’mgoing to turn the arc off if we hit play and the robot starts moving I put my hand in the way and itstops that’s useful you know people want to understand the benefit of that for umhuman safety but it’s equally as important for tooling and fixturing because we’ve got a you know a piece oftooling here if the torch runs into that in traditional robot world you’re bending the torch you got to have atorch straightener you’ve got to do some calibration work it’s a real pain in in the collaborative space especially withrobotic torches that we use that are keyed and meant for heavy duty applications it’s going to stop you’renot bending anything and so it’s got forc sensing in the arm we rely on thatto keep your people safe but also to keep that torch safe so that you’re not vending things if there is acollision great Point Rob uh can you vary the temperatureduring the weld so good question we we did you know this part that we taught umyou know pretty basic but had some interesting geometry and we just taught Parts where there was geom geometrychanges but we could just as easily teach multiple points along a path andat any given point we can change weld settings so if we want to change heat you know at a certain point we just dropin a new point and you know we can change settings on a per Point basis if we want to so the answer to that is yesthrough teaching points and controlling the well parameters between those points they could be points that are really close together if you needto okay I think you already addressed this uh or maybe this questioner wants alittle bit more clarity is it possible to integrate a linear rail into this system for larger components you you canyou can it’s you know you start to get into more sophisticated systems it thethe time to get up and running is longer the work to teach those parts is more complicated short answers absolutelywe’re all Engineers probably asking those types of questions and so we like to think of like the most complicated problems to solve you can do you canabsolutely do that but generally the best place to start is the easy stuff the boring stuff right get those doneout of the way but if you wanted to use a seventh Axis or a positionerabsolutely uh this question is asking for an opinion how do you think how do you think this robotizing in welderswill help supervisors and or iron workers um who dealing with the capacity issues anduh the availability of Supervisors I guess well you know so so as I mentionedkind of earlier will and I were were chatting you know on this on this webinar is that this problem of the theshortage of welders it’s not a new phenomenon right and it’s been it’s been happening for for decades and onlygetting worse and so I I like to emphasize that because we take we approach this differently right we’re we’re literally on an iPad um robotshave been around forever cobots are newer to the scene right but we you really got to empower that welder togive them a force multiplier and collaborative welding does that our system does that to to even a greaterdegree and so as you can make people more productive lots of things get better for the worker right they’re aswill said they’re they’re not in the fumes if you can have one person operating two cobots and maybe they’redoing something by hand right while the cobots are running that person’s more productive when people are more productive wages increase right allthings that benefit the worker the the work environment the company to be more productive yeah and I I would add on topof that Rob I mean it makes the job of the supervisor easier right to be able to they don’t have to worry so muchabout the individual quality they can really worry about the person themselves rather than the output of the productand that’s you know you really when uh when your manager cares about you then you care about your work and so it itcreates this positivity cycle inside a workspace because there’s less like nitpicking over the quality of a wellbecause the weld quality is more consistent out of the cobot so there’s there’s a lot of pieces here um and youknow cobots are used for other parts of this you see cobots not the H robotic solution but there’s finishing cobotsand there’s there’s cobots used to do cutting and and some of the other processes around welding to add value toother workers that aren’t just the welders in the metal in the in the fabricationshop okay I’m just going to read this question because I I’m not sure that I can rephrase it it as clearly as I thinkit ought to be how easily can you program different loose welds and walkaway without the hitting without the cobot hitting all parts of the construction that is say of the you knowof The Jig of the setup yeah so I’ll I’ll make some assumptions what I thinkthe question is we did a pretty basic um part that we taught and then we did apretty basic weld over here that we taught and what I was emphasizing maybe too much was if you have real basicwelds you don’t even need to put in air moves but but you know to to approach or or a Home position or anything like thatright the software understands what it’s trying to do but that was a really basic part we can teach parts we can add airmoves we can add lots of air moves right to kind of clear things and get to another point where it’s got a weld you know we have the ability to pattern andshift and add air moves in between those and so if we taught you know a part in this area of the table and we wanted tohave three more of them or two more over there we could teach it once and through the softbasically copy and paste it by literally just moving the robot and clicking the blue button to pattern of them butthrough the combination of welding moves which is what we use to to um teach thispart and do that dry run and then this part over here and do the Weld and air moves right you can clear anything youneed to go and have that robot swing around and kind of get into tight spaces avoid obstacles and objects avoid yourfix string and and one thing is the UR cobot has a very repeatability path arepeatable path right Rob so it’s not like you teach it it does the weld twice and then it does it on a different paththe next time like it’s a very repeatable path and so um if you’ve taught it and it’s not collided with anyof the the constructions or it hasn’t collided with any of the fixtures you can rely on that it’s going to move thesame way each time yeah we like to say when we you know when we’re talking about repeatability like you mentioned will um and this is no no nothingagainst the welder it is more repeatable than the human welder right the path accuracy is more repeatable than thehuman right and this is why people get that consistency uh is the robot or cobothardwired or Wi-Fi connected or both great question so the controller has anEthernet port in it we have software that runs on the robot controller and so Ur is a great partner that has an open platform so we can have our software runon it um but it is a Hardline ethernet connection now there are customers that have you know don’t havea a drop near their near where they want to have their cobal welder and so they sometimes are running a Hardline whichwe always recommend but they can run Wi-Fi and have a little Wi-Fi Bridge some of them um I think General Electricelectric has one and they’re on cellular and so uh it just needs an it needs tobe on the internet an internet connection right through through um that ethernet port but how you get it thereis up to you uh does the software the program software integrate with otherthird-party software platforms uh such as an Erp system so really good questionso Beacon because that data as we were running those parts is publishing data to your account in our software um wehave the ability to do web hook call outs and web hooks if you’re you know asking this question you might be familiar but it’s a sort of genericmechanism to send data from one system to another and so if you’ve got ideas right you you have something like thisand you have ideas on integrating it with other systems we don’t do that integration for you but the tools are there through our software and andexternal web hook call outs to send data to another system so you could post Uhow many parts were made in that shift to a to a board or something somewhere else in the plant maybe or they couldthey could suck the data out and they could post it somewhere yeah and by part number right so we remember we put inright so that data that goes out has the part number it’s got I made one of them I made two of them if you cared abouttracking your consumables right like all that information could be pushed out to an external system through Beacon that’sreally slick I think this will probably be the last question uh can you run a mirrorpath if the geometry permits or you need to teach the new points for the oppositeside of a symmetrical part so so great question right and this is this is gonnauh I think reveal how we think about product development so today you can shift in pattern which isn’t what you’reasking for right you’re asking to mirror right you got a left and a right so today we don’t have that support you would have to retach those parts butwe’ve gotten that feedback from other customers right it’s on our backlog L of features and when we do add that featureand capability your system suddenly gets better through automatic software updates and then you haveit really cool very good again this has been an excellent presentation I want tothank our speakers uh will hey I third and Rob Goldies and our sponsor sponsorUniversal robots on behalf of new equipment digest and American machinisthave a great remainder of your day