I worked with Lincoln in the past. I have no connections today other than I use some Lincoln products and know some people there.
There are a lot of reasons automation might fail. Poor design, poor integration, poor part fitup, process control variation, poor management.... The vast majority of installations work well.
I think Lincoln's additive business is a great way to develop the technology. They are making real large-scale parts for real customers. Think applications like replacing large complex forgings with long lead times or large Invar sheet forms for composite layups. They have a dedicated facility with a large number of robots and people engaged in it. And, they are eating their own cooking with the automation.
Lincoln was given free range to make all of those decisions, part config changes, fixture design, proper robot application, welding parameters.
Then, they kept making last minute changes, after the foundation was installed,
costing much in over runs, and not having a clean install.
A total failure, and the Lincoln install people kept working with no safety glasses, nor following any LOTO procedures.
The robot sit's idle, back to manual welding.
And then you said this:
"I worked with Lincoln in the past. I have no connections today other than I use some Lincoln products and know some people there.
There are a lot of reasons automation might fail. Poor design, poor integration, poor part fitup, process control variation, poor management.... The vast majority of installations work well."
The "vast majority" how would YOU know this ? Someone from Lincoln told you ?
Would they ever tell you otherwise ?
So now your touting Lincoln as being soo great in additive ?
Give me a break, there are others already doing very good work.
