Increased productivity and lower costs thanks to robotic welding

RobWelding helps companies move from manual welding to robotic welding by building and integrating complete robotic systems. The goal is to completely relieve customers and be a reliable partner for staff, customers and other organizations. Good communication and cooperation are important here. Not only internally and with clients, but also with partners. Mario Hakkert and Marco Slebus of RobWelding elaborate on this.

In 2006, Karel van Vlastuin founded RobWelding, a company, as the name suggests, that specializes in robotic welding. In 2011, the first employee joined the company. RobWelding has since grown into a company with 25 employees that builds and integrates complete robotic installations. Mario Hakkert, production manager and project leader at the company from Dodewaard: "We supply welding robot systems, precisely tailored to the production demand. We do that from our Ready Robotic Line, among others. These are ready-to-use welding robots in various sizes. In addition, we supply various specialty machines. Thereby, we continue to solve points until the machine can weld fully functional and independently and the customer is completely relieved." 

Growth

RobWelding continues to grow. Hakkert: "We expect an annual growth of 10-15%. We have also started a completely new department: RobPainting. Here we want to use spray robots to make robot painting possible for everyone. However, we owe our success not only to our expertise, but also to cooperation with the right partners," he continues. "For example, we apply ABB welding robots and use various cable and cable crawler solutions from igus." 

igus has been a partner of RobWelding since 2011. "We use welding robots from ABB that we can purchase complete with cables. However, we also regularly use Güdel tracks. This created the need for customized cables, which ABB could not supply. That's when igus came into the picture. It can produce and deliver quality robot cables and cable tracks for single pieces as well, with the right specifications, lengths and compositions and at an attractive price. A few years ago RobWelding designed its own track, again with igus ready chain tracks with cables."

Composition

Colleague Marco Slebus, robotic engineer: "With a new project, I look at which cables are needed. We often need specimens that igus has made for us before, so we can call on previous experience for this. If it involves new cables, we discuss together with an engineer from igus how we can best assemble the cables: with which connector, pins, cores, ... When this is clear, we provide a list of the required components, taking into account the specific position in the welding configuration, possible EMC failures, and so on. igus thinks along with us about this so that we can immediately come to a good solution." Hakkert adds: "Also in the purchasing process, someone looks along with us. For example, for some configurations it is more advantageous to add a number of other cables or hoses, such as a liner through which the welding wire passes. igus looks at the total package in order to be able to supply the necessary components as cheaply as possible. That's very pleasing."

Successful projects

Slebus gives some examples of realized projects where good cooperation was necessary. "We developed a large special machine to weld stair treads, which required two cable tracks to feed the large amount of cables. A lot of development and therefore cooperation was needed there to properly integrate the cable and cable tracks. The project was delivered successfully." igus offers cables for single pieces, but can also supply larger quantities. "We recently built ten machines in which several igus cable beads were used per machine. The size of the project made it special, but the quality remained consistently good. Just as we take care of our customers, igus also takes care of us." Hakkert hooks into this. "Even if there is a need in terms of delivery time, a phone call to Willy Arntz, our contact person at igus, is enough to help us out. Of course he cannot produce the cable himself in his garden shed, but he will do everything he can to arrange what is within his power. Especially in corona time he has helped us very much on several occasions. We therefore hope that we can continue the cooperation for a long time."