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Order of Magnitude for Operational Cost of Robotic Weld Cell

Johnny SolidWorks

Hot Rolled
Joined
Apr 2, 2013
Location
Rochester
I posted this on one of the Industrial Robotics forums I'm a member of, but it's not real active over there, and I haven't gotten any input. I also asked my Fanuc Distributor, and haven't heard back from him (and will take it with a grain of salt when I do anyway.)

Hey gang, trying to wrap my head around total cost of ownership for a robotic weld cell, and I need some help.

For those of you who have experience with them, what's the actual cost per 8 hours for a typical robotic MIG weld cell, including consumables (wire and gas) with a welder running ~65% of the time? I'm not trying to get to the penny (although I am being specific on purpose) but would like to get a decent idea if possible. Order of magnitude (are we talking $500 per 8 hours, or $2,500 per 8 hours?)

Thanks All!

For the curious: I'm an Automation Engineer looking at ROI on a weld cell for a customer who's a friend, but haven't ever run a weld cell in production.
 
I run two cells,
The labour is the biggest expense, obviously dependent on weld size, type and length.

For quoting I work on 400mm per min weld speed, gas at 15 to 20 Lpm and wire obviously depends on weld size.

Try the Fronius calculator
WeldWizard

Or Miller
MIG Solid-Core Welding Calculator | MillerWelds

The rest of the costs are standard, rent, capital cost, electricity is pretty low the robots run on less than 15 amps and the welders will be modern inverter types - efficient.
 
If you know your wire speed and gas flow rates this should not be hard to approximate, 65% is either long welds or a pretty good cycle rate though. Gas wise, best about about anouther secound for pre and post flow and it should get you pretty dang accurate for a mig, for tig you obviously need to factor in more post flow time.

Personally i have kinda always been curious how mig consumables and such are monitored - cleaned on a robot cell. Same for a TIG electrode.
 
What kind of parts will you be welding? We make hydraulic cylinders. Some parts we weld at 170amps with 4 runs and other parts we're hitting 300amps with 10 runs of weld. Your welder is running much more of the time on those long runs. On some part runs a bottle of gas could last a week and other times only a day.

So ballpark figures on one particular part. Somewhere in the region of 50% actual time spent welding. One roll of standard wire in a day and a bottle of gas might last 2 days. In that example you're talking $60 per day in wire and gas. Typically use 2 to 3 tips in there as well so you're talking $70. You would have to add on a bit more for parts that need to be changed periodically and maintenance but this is not huge.

Hopefully that's the kind of ballpark you're looking for.

We run ABB robots with Fronius plant. When you get them dialed in just right you're rubbing the spatter off by hand. They can be a little finicky at times but we could not operate without them.
 
I'm glad I asked here - I wound up getting way better information than I was able to get from my contact at the robot company, who just dumped me off on someone with a "Sorry, can't help, maybe this guy can."

Predominate use would be welding 11 ga mild steel round tube to 1/4" - 9/32" mild steel plate (inserting the tube through a cutout in the plate and welding it from both sides.)

Thanks all!
 
If you are welding round a part look at internal dress pack - cables through the wrist, you can weld all the way around the part and also put parts closer together.

Also water cooled torch is smaller for the same rating and the consumables last better.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk
 








 
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