Key takeaways from FABTECH 2022: growing automation, connected machines, good information, and more

Tens of thousands descended on the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta for FABTECH 2022. Butler Photography

It’s FABTECH season. The industry returned to Atlanta in November—more than 29,800 attendees in all. Uncertainties remain. Will inflation abate? Will supply chain issues resolve? Is a recession on the horizon? Overall, though, attendees and exhibitors alike accentuated the positive. It’s a good time to be in the metal fabrication business.

Walking the show floor from Nov. 8-10, I took away four key trends. The most obvious was automation, but the message from exhibitors wasn’t just about pure power and big towers. Years ago, if a machine vendor offered a laser cutting system with more than 20 kW of cutting power (and several at this year’s show did), you’d see a crowd around those machines, many standing agog, just amazed by how it sliced through thick plate like butter. This year, such machines attracted crowds, but most looked at them not as a competitive advantage on their own but as a key piece of a more complicated differentiation puzzle.

Customers don’t pay for fast laser cutting; they pay for parts and assemblies delivered on time. If machines produce, that’s great, but if they just feed an ever-growing pile of work-in-process (WIP), is that production really increasing overall throughput? Material handling automation has become a necessity in many applications—not just material feeding but also part removal, optimizing both part flow and material yield. That’s a tough balance to achieve.

This blends with the second FABTECH takeaway: the importance of good information, along with the ability to analyze and synthesize that information to get the most out of people and equipment. Job sequencing and grouping really matter here. Should a series of jobs flow through an automatic-tool-change brake, or should one brake have a staged setup that accepts a range of jobs, eliminating changeover altogether? A smart mix of both could facilitate kit-based part flow and keep WIP on the move.

The show had its fair share of welding technology that added yet more elements to the information puzzle. Laser welding, for instance, continues to gain a presence, and it opens a host of new opportunities that call for analysis and synthesis of good information. In recent years, fabricators with advanced forming capabilities would attempt to “unitize” assemblies by designing a few highly formed parts with little welding. The thinking was that a bend was a lot easier to make than a weld, especially if offline programming and simulation software did the heavy lifting.

Fabricators with robotic laser welding cells, though, can think differently. The robot laser-welds so quickly and accurately, producing welds that require no grinding or polishing whatsoever. In some cases, it’s actually faster to laser-weld a few simple blanks rather than form a complex component with multiple bends. Such blanks have simpler shapes and so also might fit better within a nest of cut parts. Perhaps they could be cut along a common line, if edge quality requirements allow for it and the nest remains stable throughout the cutting cycle. The result: greater material yield.

The synthesis continues, and all of it requires good information, preferably in digital forms like 3D CAD. The better information a fabricator has upfront, the better use it can make of automation downstream.

The third big FABTECH takeaway: The push for connected machines isn’t going away. After all, such connection is what makes good synthesis and analysis possible, especially in the highly complex world of custom fabrication. At first, connected machines might reveal low-hanging-fruit improvements, like operators spending too much time hunting for tools. Soon, though, software might reveal certain, perhaps unintuitive material flows that help get the most out of people and machines.

Connected machines and systems help shop managers (and everyone else) connect the dots and streamline (or even automate) order processing in the office. Accurate time measurements also enable highly accurate costing and, hence, competitive quoting.

FABTECH’s final takeaway: Fabricators need to take cybersecurity seriously, especially considering the increased importance of digital data. Several of the show’s speakers described just how vulnerable fabricators are. Manufacturing has become one of the most vulnerable industries for cybercriminals, who now are taking a “bottom up” strategy. Instead of attacking large OEMs, the criminals sneak into their suppliers’ less secure systems.

The 2022 FABTECH show revealed several key trends, including the increasing importance of good information. Butler Photography

The very fact cybercriminals are targeting fabricators and other manufacturers reveals a fundamental shift: the importance of information. Shops aren’t really in the parts-making business. If they were, nothing really would differentiate one fab shop from another. After all, everyone has access to the same material and machines. Today, information has become a key differentiator. The better it’s used and protected, the more competitive a metal fabricator can be.

Look for continuing coverage online and in the print edition of The FABRICATOR.

The 2022 FABTECH show had its fair share of welding technology that added yet more elements to the information puzzle. Butler Photography