Our Sites

How robotic welding affects shop culture

It’s a subtle, complex issue, but the net result should be positive

Editor's Note: This article is a combination of two articles previously published in separate issues of The Fabricator magazine.

People are sick of automation, literally—at least according to a study from Ball State published in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine. Michael Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research, Muncie, Ind., said in a statement, “People who live and work in areas where automation is taking place are sickened by the thought of losing their jobs and having no way to provide for themselves or their families.”

The study quantifies what it calls “automation risk”—that is, the risk automation will disrupt one’s career. It attempts to quantify what those in manufacturing have dealt with for years. Automation is an economic reality. Sure, automation creates other jobs, but the fact remains that automation also lowers overall labor costs. Fewer people in fewer jobs churn out more work than ever.

But that’s a top-level view. The truth is that how automation affects a workforce depends on what that automation is replacing. Knowledge of the manual process has value; in some areas, it can be indispensable. This is especially true when it comes to robotic welding.

Automation Policy

It’s still common to hear welders say they are worried about robots taking their job, though it’s not quite as common as it once was, considering how ubiquitous robots have become, from the largest contract fabricator to the smallest job shop. But it can throw a wrench into an otherwise positive shop culture. So what can a shop manager do to mitigate these worries?

One way is through good communication. For instance, Glendale Mfg. Co., U-Haul’s metal fabrication arm based near Phoenix, opened its gleaming plant in 2016 with material handling and cutting automation, modern press brakes, and a row of robotic welders. The company has seen a major uptick in demand in recent years, and the automation has been integral to meeting capacity demands.

Even so, during its years-long transition toward advanced automation, open communication prevailed. “We were straightforward about it,” said Cedric Moore, plant president. “We are all about the well-being of our people. No one would lose their job to a robot or any other automation.”

Welding Expertise

Beyond this, fabricators can implement robotic welding with a clear strategy, with eyes open to the welding knowledge these robot operators and technicians require. It’s not plug-and-play.

“Too many times, companies put a robot programmer on a robot welding cell, and that person has no concept of the welding application,” said Rick Maroney, director of Tanner, Ala.-based Alabama Robotics Technology Park (RTP), a part of Alabama Industrial Development Training, a state agency under the Commerce Department umbrella. “So he has quality issues, because he doesn’t know what to look for. If he doesn’t have a welding background, he has no way to know what’s causing his problems.” It could be a power source issue, perhaps an alignment issue from a cast in the wire. “If a person doesn’t know about welding, he’s going to be in the dark.”

RTP trains people either working at Alabama manufacturers or (less commonly) attending a community or technical college in the state. The training facility is unique. It has seven different robot brands connected to various power sources, and still other robots for pick-and-place, machine tending, material handling, and dispensing (including powder coating and adhesives). It also trains people in offline programming and simulation, as well as traditional teach pendant programming. It’s even talking with vendors about acquiring a few collaborative welding robots.

The vast array of robots makes RTP unique, being one of the few if not only places in the world one could train on so many different types of robots at one time. But as Maroney explained, no matter how well-versed a person is in robotics, an effective welding robot operator needs to know the intricacies of metal joining. He could have years of programming experience, for everything from paint application to material handling. “You still need to know how to read a weld,” he said.

Todd and Kristen Whitt stand in front of their largest robotic welding cell. Each of the two tables in the cell can hold up to 1,600 lbs. and workpieces as long as 9.5 ft.

Installing a robot without hiring the welding expertise can add to shop culture problems. Todd Whitt, president of TnL Welding, a job shop in Sidney, Ohio, recalled such a problem at a former employer when that company bought a welding robot from a customer. “They were putting anybody on the robot, and everybody thought it was junk. It wasn’t putting a weld in the same place every time. They really didn’t know anything about robotics.”

Meanwhile, Whitt was taking night classes in engineering, and one of those classes happened to be about robotics. “I went to class, and I fell for it. The robot is repeatable. The fixtures and parts are what move, so you just need to make sure all the parts are in the same place every time.

“I came back to work, but they still wanted me back in the weld booth.”

It wasn’t until the fab shop had burned through all the patience of its technical staff, who now deemed the robots “junk,” according to Whitt, that they were willing to take input from a nontraditional source, like from someone laying down production welds in a booth. Whitt said he jumped at the chance.

Knowing that an effective welding cell is more than just about a robot, Whitt examined part designs and welding fixtures more closely. He said he wasn’t afraid to play around with power source settings to dial in the correct parameters. Soon the robots were welding as they originally were intended.

Industry needs more skilled people, and no matter how automated a fabricator becomes, it will still need skilled people who know how to run that automation. But among all the common robotic processes in fabrication, welding stands apart. The process calls for intricate, subtle moves—a weave here, a stringer there, a bit more or less weld metal here to account for joint gap variation and postweld shrinkage. How will that shrinkage affect tolerances? Do the fixtures account for it? The questions abound. A welding robot isn’t just moving from point A to point B.

Company Structure: Who Does What?

All this subtlety requires solid structure and procedures to mitigate variation. Welding robots can be extraordinarily productive, which is great, but it also makes downtime more expensive.

Whitt is a firm believer in defining what people can and can’t do to the welding robot, especially when changing a robot program. “The robot goes to the same place time after time after time. If the welds are off, they’re off for a reason.”

For this reason, he feels that a welding robot operator shouldn’t be tweaking a weld program of previously run jobs. Since the robot goes to the same place every time, the problem probably isn’t with the robot.

In many cases, the operator should be on the lookout for patterns—attributes that appear repeatedly. If a weld is off, he said, the operator should sometimes run the next part. If the next part doesn’t have the error, then the first piece might have been loaded incorrectly, formed improperly on the press brake, or some other fluke.

If the welding error remains, however, he should stop and notify his supervisor. The wire may have a cast in it, the tip may be wearing—any number of issues could be causing the problem, and if it’s not corrected, it’s only going to get worse.

In these cases, Whitt said, the worst thing an operator can do is to tweak the program to “make it work.” Then the next operator arrives on second shift, launches a weld program, and becomes mystified when the robot produces bad part after part. What happened? The weld program was “tweaked” to overcome a larger, unrelated problem, and that larger problem gets worse. All this, Whitt said, goes against the very thing that makes a welding robot so precise and productive: its repeatability.

Whitt and other sources emphasized that procedures will vary depending on the application and company. Regardless, those procedures must be made clear, and they should help people improve quality and be more productive. If they do the opposite, they can exacerbate shop culture problems. From a manual welder’s perspective, his employer seems to be spending a lot of time and money on a robot—a technology, he feels, is designed to automate his job away. He shakes his head and continues welding as the rift between management and the front lines widens.

A Workforce Engaged With Automation

So how can a shop narrow the rift? Step one, Whitt said, is to ensure the parts to be welded are repeatable. If a shop has modern laser cutters and press brakes, it’s highly likely those parts will be sufficiently precise for a welding robot. But if upstream machines are old—an old plasma system, a mechanical press brake with worn tooling—or if quality checks aren’t sufficient, a welding robot may not be the best fit.

Second, promote a productive weld shop that rewards hard work. Whitt recalled working as a welder on the floor at a previous employer, and treating the shop rate—the number of parts welders were expected to weld an hour—not as a requirement, but just as a starting point. “I have always been a go-getter. If the shop rate was 10 parts an hour, I would work harder and churn out 20 parts an hour.” If welders aren’t productive, take their time between welds, strive to do the absolute minimum, and aren’t engaged, a welding robot isn’t going to solve the culture problem.

Third, find and train welders who have a keen interest in robotics. At Northwest Iowa Community College (NICC), a student learns various aspects of manual welding—all the conventional processes, along with a little pipe welding—before learning anything about the welding robot.

“It’s all in the motivation and the attitude,” said Robert Hoting, a welding instructor at NICC. “It’s usually someone who understands and works well with computers and can gain a good understanding of the XYZ coordinate system.”

This can be challenging for some, he said, simply because it’s such a departure from manual welding. “When you get into welding, you pull the trigger, and eventually it’s all muscle memory, including the gun and travel angle.” The robot, he added, will do exactly what the weld program tells it to do. It can do it very quickly and well if the welding system is maintained and set up correctly, but it’s still just following orders.

In Whitt’s case, finding and training a welder was a family affair. His daughter Kristen moved home after going to school for automotive diesel mechanics and working in graphic design. The two drag raced and worked on cars during Kristen’s early years, so they weren’t strangers to sharing the same workspace.

“When I moved back, I didn’t know anything,” she said. “I came into the business as an operator running the robots. I got into welding at the tables.”

Whitt said his daughter picks up the finer points of welding and robotic programming very quickly. “I can show her one time that this is what it looks like, and she can then figure it out on her own.”

And today they run the shop together.

Gauging Interest

So how do you gauge a welder’s interest in robotic welding, be it as an operator, supervisor, or programmer? As Whitt explained, the trick is to identify someone who appreciates the robot’s strengths—not only its ability to weld the same way time after time, but also its ability to perform tasks a human really couldn’t do, or at least do well.

Central to this is the fact that the robot welds blind, which Whitt sees as a positive attribute. Because it welds blind, it can access certain joints a manual welder couldn’t see. If a blind robot welds parts perfectly, that means upstream parts are solid and the part isn’t likely to be rejected.

Sure, a welding robot could have seam tracking, which makes sense in certain applications. But Whitt and others have found that it makes more sense to ensure the part is engineered and formed correctly for robotic welding, rather than forcing the robot to adapt to a variable seam.

Finally, training people to take care of welding robots for the long run is key. Whitt’s shop has several welding robots that are more than 30 years old, but you’d never know it. They’re clean, and they’re still as productive as ever.

“A clean robot is a happy robot,” Whitt said.

Whitt and his team clean the robot’s joints, check contact tips, check the liners and wire feed, and perform other basic preventive maintenance. They also work in a structured environment—no changing weld programs on-the-fly.

All this makes robotic welding more productive and reliable, and less of a headache. Welding robots can then be looked at as just part of a modern, productive welding department, which does and will continue to need those with welding expertise. And just perhaps, automation, in welding and otherwise, won’t come with so much anxiety and those negative health effects the researchers at Ball State documented. If people are trained to well-defined practices, enjoy their jobs, know what’s expected, and work in a safe and clean environment—with proper safeguarding and good fume collection—perhaps a lot of the cultural problems will take care of themselves.

About the Authors
The Fabricator

Dan Davis

Editor-in-Chief

2135 Point Blvd.

Elgin, IL 60123

815-227-8281

Dan Davis is editor-in-chief of The Fabricator, the industry's most widely circulated metal fabricating magazine, and its sister publications, The Tube & Pipe Journal and The Welder. He has been with the publications since April 2002.

The Fabricator

Tim Heston

Senior Editor

2135 Point Blvd

Elgin, IL 60123

815-381-1314

Tim Heston, The Fabricator's senior editor, has covered the metal fabrication industry since 1998, starting his career at the American Welding Society's Welding Journal. Since then he has covered the full range of metal fabrication processes, from stamping, bending, and cutting to grinding and polishing. He joined The Fabricator's staff in October 2007.