African Fusion talks to Yaskawa Southern Africa’s MD, Andrew Crackett, about exciting new opportunities for those in general industry seeking to improve the productivity, quality and efficiency of their welding processes, while also taking better care of workers, reducing waste and better protecting the environment.
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Yaskawa’s first objective of Vision 2025, the company’s global roadmap for its automation offering, is to expand its core business of motion control and robotics into a more diverse range of markets and applications. “For many decades, our welding robots have been widely adopted by mass producers, most notably those in the automotive industry. Now, however, robotic solutions make much more sense and can easily be justified for a much wider range of manufacturing task,” says Andrew Crackett of Yaskawa Southern Africa.
“Wherever we see a welder loading a jig to manually weld a batch of components, we now see an opportunity to automate this production so as to raise the company’s efficiency, productivity and weld quality – and robot welding equipment is simpler and more affordable than ever,” he tells African Fusion.
Instead of simply selling individual robotic units, though, he says the new focus is on flexible systems that meet a full range of customer needs. “We can provide robot systems that can collaborate with humans, for example,” he says, citing Yaskawa’s Weld4Me collaborative welding solution as an example.
Weld4Me is a fully integrated mobile robot welding system designed as a support tool for welders. “We want South African manufactures to see how easy it is to use these systems in a normal welding cell. I want welders who are being coded at training schools such as the SAIW to have access to using one of our Weld4Me systems, so that when they are back in industry, they will remember how simple it is to put robots to work,” says Crackett.
The Weld4Me robot is ‘taught’ by a welder who shows it exactly how to move across a joint, with respect to torch angles, welding speeds and parameters. It takes all the complexity out of programming a typical industrial robot,” he explains, adding that this brings the consistent quality of robotic welding to an ordinary welding bay, helping manual welders that are producing 20, 30 or 100 identical components.
Also advancing Yaskawa’s drive to meet general industrial needs, is the new MOTOMAN YRC1000 robot controller. Compact and powerful, this new multi-axis and multi-tasking controller can coordinate the motion of up to eight robots and a total of 72 motion axes – where robot systems are being used with positioners, tracks or gantries, for example.
The Yaskawa MOTOMAN robot range is also now available with the new Sigma-7 range of servo motors, which is a state-of-the-art highest efficiency (IE5) family of servo motors that are ideally suited for use with the new Yaskawa YRC1000 controller.
“When high volume repetitive work is being done, using YRC1000 controller with one of our Sigma 7 Yaskawa Robots will significantly reduce cycle times and productivity, while massively reducing energy costs and waste,” Crackett argues, highlighting the current imperative in South Africa to increase efficiencies, especially with regard to energy use.
“Repetitive work is also tiresome for manual welders. By implementing a robotic system, we can get our efficiencies and production output up, while steering the human focus in more productive, creative and interesting directions.
“Also, the whole world is under pressure to reduce waste. With welding, that is all about consumables: reducing the amounts of wire, shielding gas and parent metal going into the production line, for example,” he continues.
At the starting point of reducing waste is avoiding scrap. Robots make this possible by optimising the welding in advance and then being able to repeat the process consistently for any number of components.
“What we offer is complete robot welding systems that include the welding arm and its controller, along with the welding power source – and we can offer SKS, Fronius or our own MOTOWELD power source, which is ideally suited to the cost-sensitive general industry market.
“Once the starting point and the welding path have been programmed, which is much easier than ever before, the welder simply selects the material being welded, the gas and wire being used and the system will calculate the welding parameters necessary to produce an ideal weld. This can, of course, be fine-tuned and optimised to better suit the exact scenario.
“Also though, we can add shielding gas economisers, and wire-cutting, gas-nozzle-cleaning and anti-spatter spray stations to ensure the robot welder continues to deliver optimal welds. There are many technologies available now, just to reduce the amount of waste,” Crackett informs African Fusion.
Another of Yaskawa’s Vision 2025 key objectives is the evolution of Industry 4.0. “We have our own interpretation of this called i3-Mechatronics, with i3 standing for integrated, intelligent and innovative,” says Crackett.
“In South Africa, we do not believe this is all about sophisticated, automated factories. There are many integrated, intelligent and innovative ways that new generation robots can be applied to meet the day to day needs of South African manufacturers,” he concludes.
