Welding, Robot

A robot repeatedly moves the welding gun to each weld location and positions it perpendicular to the weld seam. It also replays programmed welding schedules.

Spot welding robots should have six ore more axes of motion and be capable of approaching points in the work envelope from any angle. This permits the robot to be flexible in positioning a welding gun to weld an assembly. Some movements that are awkward for an operator, such as positioning the welding gun upside down, are easily performed by a robot.

Spot welding is a type of resistance welding used to weld various sheet metal products. Typically the sheets are in the 0.5-3.0 mm (.020-.125 inch ) thickness range. The process uses two shaped copper alloy electrodes to concentrate welding current into a small "spot" and to simultaneously clamp the sheets together. Forcing a large current through the spot will melt the metal and form the weld. The attractive feature of spot welding is a lot of energy can be delivered to the spot in a very short time (ten to one hundred milliseconds. That permits the welding to occur without excessive heating to the rest of the sheet.

The amount of heat (energy) delivered to the spot is determined by the resistance between the electrodes and the amplitude and duration of the current. The amount of energy is chosen to match the sheet's material properties, its thickness, and type of electrodes. Applying too little energy won't melt the metal or will make a poor weld. Applying too much energy will melt too much metal and make a hole rather than a weld.

The technical data for the weld cycle time came from: www.robot-welding.com/Welding_parameters.htm

The speed for the Robot is user set/changeable.