Time, as is often said, is money. A key to cost savings in most operations is the reduction of time spent involved in completing a job. The math is straightforward — the less time spent in preparation and fininshing on a task means more time to perform the actual task. In production, any gained minutes add up to an increased throughput of completed pieces, particularly on automated lines.

Large welding jobs, or welding for high production volumes, can be achieved through such strategies as switching from 33-lb spools of wire to larger 66 lb coils or 400-lb drums. As described in the article on pg. 12 of this issue, a shop using 10,000 lb of wire annually stands to gain more than $20,000 by reducing the frequency of times required to remove and replace wire spools.

Another alternative for companies that use 10 times or more the welding wire cited in the previous example is a continuous wire dispensing system. The typical system is set up with two drums or cartons of wire. A portable wire dresser and a butt welder, which may be included in the system, are used to attach the end wire from one wire pack to the wire-start end of the second pack. When one pack empties of wire, it can be replaced and its wirestart end attached to the end of the other pack's wire, without interrupting operations. The support stand for the wire packs also may include an attached wire feeder.

One customer of Lincoln Electric (www.lincolnelectric.com) in the auto industry uses about 210,000 lbs of wire a year. Lincoln supplied two continuous wire feed systems manufactured by ELCo Enterprises Inc. (www.wire-wizard.com), and loaded with 1,000-lb boxes of wire, for the customer's robotic weld cell.

Michael Miller, product manager of MIG consumables at Lincoln Electric, said that such a system reduces the number of times a robotic cell is out of service by removing shut downs for wire replacement. He added that other companies have expressed interest in continuous wire systems because they want their wire supplies remote from their robotic cell — with a continuous feed system, a company would save the time required for an employee to run new wire through 50 ft or more of wire-routing conduit.