Anyone have a cobot welding robot?

Does anyone have a welding cobot and if so, how is it working for you?

Looking at this system:

Robotic Welding Rentals | BotX Welding Cobot | Red-D-Arc

Just got word we have 'years' of production welding work and I have the word out to hire a few more people (I have 5 now) but this looks promising.

I can't do a 'real' guarded welding robot. The above system will let me try for 4 weeks.

The business I work for is in the market for a welding robot but determined the cobots were not for us, as we needed to make far more complex parts than it could handle, largely due to positioning.

I did talk to a service tech for Lincoln welding robots and while I was asking if all robots were as difficult to program as the Lincolns he said all guarded cells are but then went on a tangent about how easy cobots are, without me having brought it up, so I guess that's worth something.

We did have some concerns as to the production capacity, but I think the whoever rents it out to you will be happy to weld up a part you ship to them and tell you the exact cycle time on it.

I honestly think the biggest factor in selecting a robot is your parts more than anything. I'm guessing you are talking about fairly simple, repetitive parts, with consistent fitup, in which case they would be my choice from what I have been seen and told, though we did not get as far as demoing one due to the aforementioned issues.

I have been looking into this heavily for awhile.

Cobots doing welding still need guarding for arc light etc, so figuring in a proper cell compared to a production robot cell, close to same money. Robots prefer to weld in flat position so any angled or vertical welds you need a rotator to roll those into flat, alot of used production cells have that already. Cobots give up speed for easy programming and it seems like cobots have a design life of lets say 10k hours where production robots need an oil change at that many hours.

I'm looking into a used cell as a starter robot, but first working on better fixtures with toggle clamps instead of F clamps etc.

JP Machining said:

I have been looking into this heavily for awhile.

Cobots doing welding still need guarding for arc light etc, so figuring in a proper cell compared to a production robot cell, close to same money. Robots prefer to weld in flat position so any angled or vertical welds you need a rotator to roll those into flat, alot of used production cells have that already. Cobots give up speed for easy programming and it seems like cobots have a design life of lets say 10k hours where production robots need an oil change at that many hours.

I'm looking into a used cell as a starter robot, but first working on better fixtures with toggle clamps instead of F clamps etc.

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We just got financing approval for our robot, but we are planning on making some simple pneumatic clamps for our jigs. You make want to look into that option.

Why do you need cobots? Why not just regular robot? I think you can make robots very safe from collisions with people nowaday. As for programming, KUKA has ready2teach option that is extremely interesting. Waiting for ours to arrive in April 2022.

Reading a bit more into it lately and watching some youtubes a 'real' robot would suffice.

It seems the Fanucs with the teach pendants aren't terribly more complex when it comes to programming vs the cobots.

I actually have a chance at purchasing a fanuc that's very near me...just have to justify it and keep work flowing.

(Another one of those "the guy who ran it left" situations.