A Welded-Bracket Fabricator Cuts Weld Time to About One Minute With a Cobot

A bracket line built on hand welding

A welded-bracket fabricator with roughly 20 employees produced brackets in volume, and every bracket was welded by hand. According to the robot supplier's account, one bracket took about 7 to 8 minutes of welding time, and that pace set the ceiling on what the floor could ship.

Adding output meant adding welders. Skilled welders take time to find and train, and each added station brings more labor cost into a shop that needs steady margins. Customer demand for brackets did not wait for hiring.

The shop needed to know whether a collaborative robot could take over the repeat bracket welds well enough to carry volume that had been spread across a larger crew.

A welding cobot takes the repeat work

The fabricator placed a collaborative robot arm on its repeat bracket welds. The welding work moved to the cobot, and the welders shifted to running the cell rather than welding every bracket by hand.

According to the managing partner, the change did not lead to layoffs. The shop kept its people and changed the way bracket welding was staffed.

• Repeat bracket welds moved to a welding cobot
• Two welders run the cell alongside the cobot
• Output once run by eight welders now comes from two welders and the cobot
• No layoffs, according to the managing partner

Weld time and crew size, as the supplier reports them

Weld time per bracket fell from about 7 to 8 minutes to about one minute or less, according to the robot supplier's account. The figure describes the bracket cell in production, not a lab trial.

The same account says two welders and a cobot now produce the volume that eight welders once did. The managing partner adds that the cobot did not cause layoffs, which changes how the result reads for a shop that is weighing headcount.

The robot supplier also reports payback in less than three months. Treat that as the supplier's estimate. Actual payback depends on bracket volume, shift pattern and what the shop's welding labor cost before the change.

Where cobot welding fits a headcount plan

A shop weighing a welding cobot against adding welders is making a staffing decision as much as an equipment one. Service Robot Co. is a full-service, OEM-neutral robot integrator for US businesses. We select robots across manufacturers, then lease, deploy, integrate, train and service each unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so one partner covers the whole lifecycle.

Our cobot leasing for manufacturing runs on a three year lease with one fixed payment, quoted after a site assessment. That gives a shop a clear figure to set against the cost of hiring, and robot lease options can be compared on the same terms.

This study describes another shop's deployment. Service Robot Co. did not run it, and the figures are the supplier's account. A shop should test any result like this against its own bracket volumes, floor layout and staffing before deciding.