A welding robot controller for the digital age

Advanced welding equipment manufacturer OTC DAIHEN has unveiled its FD21 controller for its family of welding robots. Images provided by OTC DAIHEN

Like the general public waiting for a new smartphone, metal fabricators have a right to get excited about new technology releases. If the fabricating technology developer has done its job correctly, the metal fabricator can plan to enjoy a new tool that will help it get parts out the door more efficiently and make shop floor employees that much more productive.

Mike Monnin, general manager, OTC DAIHEN Inc., actually made the smartphone analogy himself in describing the user interface for the company’s new FD21 controller for welding robots. The controller’s pendant has a large screen and operates like a smartphone or tablet device. The user just has to swipe to engage menu icons and to scroll through items. A touchscreen keypad for numeric entry also can be used to input data.

The pendant itself is 15% lighter than the previous FD11 controller.

“Being able to shrink the size of things, we’re able to reduce the weight of the pendant pretty significantly,” Monnin said. “That’s pretty substantial if you’re lugging that around on a regular basis.”

The actual controller box is smaller as well than the previous generation. It’s 25% narrower, which should be appealing to those manufacturers that have a lot of welding robots and are interested in stacking the boxes.

Welding Robot Controller Connectivity

Digital connectivity is another big improvement, Monnin said. The controller has the standard EtherCAT interfaces and the OPC Unified Architecture that allows the unit to connect to production control systems, such as enterprise resource planning software and manufacturing execution systems. The controller’s high-performance computing power allows peripheral equipment to connect more easily through simplified system configuration. It’s not quite plug-and-play like putting together a home theater system, according to Monnin, but setting up a robotic welding cell is getting easier.

The digital connectivity is going to help out OTC DAIHEN with its ability to perform remote diagnostics, Monnin said.

“This will come in handy as our maintenance technicians will be able to see the current status of machines to make sure if there’s something needed like a software update before they are on-site at the manufacturer,” he said. “The fact that we could connect into the customer’s system and make some assessment remotely, maybe even do some fixes remotely, is a huge time savings for the customer.”

The FD21’s pendant also can be connected to a laptop via an adapter for off-the-shop-floor training. Using the control software’s simulation capabilities, a technician can be trained to program the welding robot in the virtual world. Monnin said a virtual pendant in the software can be used to replicate the same training, but sometimes the technician does better using the actual physical pendant that he will be using on the shop floor.

The controller’s total memory increased 40% from the FD11, from 256 MB to 10 GB. Not only can the system accommodate more jobs than the older controller, but it can help with complex jobs when it comes to programming them.

The FD21 controller for welding robots from OTC DAIHEN is nine years in the making. In addition to being smaller and more powerful than the company’s FD11 series, the new controller is designed for the digital connectivity required for today’s Industry 4.0-enabled metal fabricating operations.

Welding Robot Controller Connectivity

“One of the challenges of taking a large item from CAD and bringing it into the system in the past is that if you are dealing with a large point cloud around that part, you have to break that into multiple programs,” Monnin said. “Now you can keep the part as one single profile and one program. There’s no need to play the memory game that you used to have to play.”

The FD21 controller currently is being sold with all OTC DAIHEN welding robots.