Posted on 09/10/2019 7:22:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There's a new, easy-to-program welding robot launching in November, and for many in the industry it comes not a moment too soon. That's because there are massive labor shortages in the American welding sector.
The robot, called the BotX Welder, is a direct response to industry hiring problems, along with the persistent challenge faced by fabrication companies in producing precision parts in small batches. It's also a feat of engineering and a good example of how automation companies are now standing on the shoulders of a generation of developers who created the underlying technology that's now being deployed to address specific industrial challenges.
"Many people didn't believe that collaborative robots could perform such heavy-duty tasks as welding," says Rob Goldiez, co-founder of Hirebotics. "We realized the need of a solution for small and medium sized metal fabricators trying to find welders."
(Excerpt) Read more at zdnet.com ...
Grande Prairie, Alberta. Sorry, I should of said the numbers are in Canadian dollars.
There are some bugs that need to be worked out:)
You must be paying that for a contractor, not an employee.
Yeah that’s why EVERY SINGLE AI stock and trading generated article makes NO MOTHER ####ING SENSE AT ALL and is as worthless as USED toilet tissue.
Read some one day if you need a good laugh.
“GNC jumped 18 cents today to 2.18 a share, a gain of .18 percent”
So it went from 2 bucks to 2.18 and that’s not an almost 10 percent gain, according to AI writers. It’s a .18 percent gain.
That’s one of the LESS egregious errors.
I’m not panicking about sky net yet.
I was in a nursing home for about five months last year after my leg amputation. Most of the staff were either African or black Americans with a smattering of whites and Hispanics. This was in Grapevine, Texas.
Lots of jobs, from the Walmart cashier, to the McDonald’s worker to the welder are being and will be replaced by automation robots.
It will be what to market demands.
Depends on if the contractor makes the same rate and they both get paid for him to fix the rejected weld. Sometimes there is more money to be made by company and hand if the welder sucks.
If it’s a pipeline, then there isn’t any incentive for keeping a bad welder. They are bid per weld cost, with no payment for rework.
Plant work, and tank construction, its heighly variable. Depends pub both the client and the region.
Most decent welders have no problem breaking or sitting just under six figures.
Are you a robot?
We’re not handling it well now look at the welfare bums laying around producing offspring and doing drugs oh please yeah we need robots ha we need these jerks to get off their behinds go to work maybe sweeping the streets for openers
Domo arigato, Mr Roboto, domo ... domo ...
Pipe Fitter/fabricators and pipe welders will never be automated.
I know, I am a retired pipe fitter/fabricator and I very well know what a pipe welder is worth. A robot could never do what they do unless it was a repetitive piece done the same way day after day the exact same way.
Robotic mig welders have been around for many years. They can’t do anything faster than a 20-year-old who knows most of the alphabet can do, but the robot can make the same motions repetitively and consistently without getting bored. Larger assembly lines can use these machines to boost efficiency and lower the cost per part of repetitively fabricated parts.
The lede that got buried in this story was how robotic welding machines are going down market. Smaller shops and factories had to make a choice about where to risk: invest big money in robotics or continue to use manual processes. Robotics means higher capacity, but sales have to be there to recoup the investment and the machines are only part of the cost as professional designers and engineers have to be on board to make the most out of a big investment. For a company maybe worth two million dollars total, a new outlay of two million dollars in machinery and staff can be too big of a risk to accept.
A lot of american machine shops and parts suppliers in recent years had to make this choice. Bringing the total amount of risk down so a small shop can price competitively with an overseas competitor, and a market strategy that doesn’t require a big upfront investment is indeed a big change. Of course, this company has probably figured out how to price the rentals and service agreements so they make out like kings and the companies who use them aren’t going to reap the total benefits of cost savings as if they would if they owned the machines outright, but there are always tradeoffs, and being able to cut the expenses when the workload is slow can be a big selling point for some companies.
Not for now, those are special skill-sets.
But one day, they will be.
Oh yes, anyone worth their salt up here contracts.
the amount of buzzwords in this article is astonishing ....
here’s my understanding: small welder robots can now be rented like any other tool from a local tool rental outfit, and they’re very easy to program: like their big cousins in auto factories, when you put them in learning mode you can have a master welder guide them through the necessary welding motions, and then after that, they’ll replicate the remembered welding motions over and over again until your batch of parts are all welded up and then you take the robot back to the rental store ... and that’s a lot cheaper than having the master welder welding all of the parts himself ...
Now the incels will be competing with robot welders. Slowly the skilled jobs are going away through automation, in large part because we've raised a couple of generations of clueless unskilled layabouts.
I had one employee who asked for a couple days off even though we had a hard deadline looming. It was a time for all hands on deck. When I asked him why he needed the time off, he said he was going to get together with his friends to play video games. I just about stroked out, right then and there. To this day it still sends my blood pressure soaring, just thinking about it.
“I’m not sure human society will handle it well when almost everyone has idle hands.”
Think of all the books you could read, music you could listen to, woodworking projects you could do, cooking you could learn, hobbies you could work on, learn to play the piano. But you are right (sigh)
Plenty of robots used in welding already. This one may be a little different but there are so many used in production jobs now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.