Can Welding Robots Fill Fastening Void?

The manufacturing skills gap in the U.S. could result in 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030, according to a new study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The cost of those missing jobs could potentially total $1 trillion in 2030 alone. Manufacturers are increasingly looking to solutions like robotics and automation to bridge the gap.

Human exodus from welding
Nail guns, screw guns, glue guns; robots have been taught to use them all. Even lightweight soldering is robot-able. Until recently, except for large-scale assembly lines like auto plants, welding has eluded robotic fastening. Humans, with welding torch in hand, have been the primary producers in metal fabrication, especially joining pieces with complex geometries.

Robots first went to work as spot welders at Lordstown on General Motors assembly lines in 1969. Spot welding and die casting, caged off and isolated from humans in manufacturing has been the lot of most robots. The idea of robot welding cells in proximity to humans is relatively new, and robot tech has been ably trying to fit itself ever deeper into the joining process.

Although for humans welding jobs have been and still are very plentiful, fewer and fewer people are signing on for this potentially dangerous career. Jobs with sparking metal cinders that use tanks of explosive gases or high voltages, and utilize torches that burn at 5000 degrees Fahrenheit or more, are becoming ever less sought after or not sought after at all. Today, fabricators are facing a global shortage of 1.2 million welders, which has caused, in the U.S. alone, 40 percent of manufacturers to decline new contracts because not enough skilled welders were available.

In China, with its half-million industrial robots, 35 percent are welding robots; and incredibly, estimates see the future need for at least two million more.

With worldwide manufacturing slated to increase by 3.6 percent, and welding to follow along, growing at 5.7 percent, the fastening work is there for the asking, but humans are now wary of the hazards to health and well-being. Ultraviolet light can burn eyes, gases explode, electrocution is a threat, the ergonomics are dreadful, the pay barely middling, and who wants to weld underwater and possibly drown? Then too, says Lincoln Electric’s Jason Lange, “On any given day, the numbers of people retiring exceeds the incoming replacements, creating a void.” Hence, from drudgery and hazards that force retirements at around 50-years-old, a million-plus welding careers go wanting. “Robotic welding helps fill that void,” Lange adds.

Then there’s new metallurgy and new processes that preclude human welders, as Erwin DiMalanta, director of welding & cutting at ABB Robotics, points out. Car manufacturers have switched to high-strength and ultra-high-strength steels, he says, “which have metallurgical properties making them stronger, lighter, and more corrosion resistant, yet with high formability and weldability. That’s drastically changing how metal structures are designed, formed and assembled.” Jobs for which robots are better suited than human operators.

Then too, “as much as 90 percent of the [car’s] body might be aluminum now. Owing to its higher conductivity, you need more electrical current to spot weld aluminum and current is synonymous with heat. Yet we’re going to thinner gage materials. In some vehicles, the materials are about 1-mm thick. So how do you deal with these trends that are going in opposite directions?”

For Masoud Harooni at Trumpf Inc., its laser welding, which is a totally robotic process. “Laser is probably the biggest thing to happen to welding in decades,” he says. And it’s much faster: “For example, if you’re making 50 parts a day with robotic arc welding, robotic laser welding could produce 300, 500 or even thousands of the same part in a day.”

“One robot system will make as many parts as three welders, adds Erik Miller at Miller Electric Mfg. Co. “You’re saving two salaries per shift and the average pre-engineered cell cost is $100,000 to $120,000. It pays for itself in about a year. Typically, if you can automate a process and get payback in less than year, that’s something you do right away.”