The SmartTCP gantry robot welding cell.

NPK Construction Equipment Inc. planned for a new manufacturing facility and began research on its options for automating its welding processes that would help it to increase production, improve quality and enhance employee working conditions.

The company saw that its master welders were being taxed by an increase in demand for its products, and the shortage of expert welders made hiring additional people almost impossible.

NPK i s a manufacturer of heavy machinery and equipment for the construction, demolition and mining industries, and has been in business in Walton Hills, Ohio, since 1985. The company saw sales increase and over the past few years, and the growth put a strain on the manual welding processes it used.

NPK (www.npkce.com) saw that welding capacity to meet its increasing workload was becoming a critical bottleneck.

“Two years ago we were using 10 different outsourcing companies, five of those just for welding,” Dan Tyrrell, president of NPK Construction Equipment, said.

Tyrrell said his company’s typical batch size is four to five pieces, and its largest lot sizes ran to 24 pieces. Additionally, its inventory included multiple part numbers with minimal quantities per part.

He said he thought this small batch production didn’t lend itself well to standard robotic welding systems, and that NPK needed to find a system that is flexible enough to adapt to the sizes, shapes and quantities of each part’s welding requirements.

“As we did our research, it was apparent that there was a lack of adequate, fast automatic programming options that would minimize our down time. We needed a solution that could reliably weld all of our large complex parts quickly and accurately with minimal robot programming time required,” Tyrrell said.

The company found an answer to its needs in the automatic welding equipment made by SmartTCP (www.smarttpc.com) of Farmington Hills, Mich. SmartTCP supplies equipment designed specifically for welding complex fabrications in small batch production environments. Introduced at the FabTech International and AWS Welding Show in October, the Smart TCP Robotic Welding Solution was designed to offset the lack of skilled welders, and as a comprehensive welding system for complex welded parts made in high-mix, low volume production lots. The robotic welding system provided the ease of- use, speed and quality that NPK was looking for without sacrificing the flexibility it needed.

“NPK knew they needed to automate their process, but with the company’s high mix, low-volume production line, conventional robot cell configurations and robot programming wasn’t an option as it was too complex and time consuming,” said Efi Lebel, founder and chief executive officer of SmartTCP.

“SmartTCP’s hardware and software components create a system for small batch production that allows for extremely accurate, flexible and reliable robot welding at a much faster rate than other robot techniques being used today.”

The SmartTCP Automat ic Welding Solution automates both the robot programming and weld production. The system is a combination of hardware and software, and features a flexible and modular working envelope that allows the manufacturer to weld any weldable part.

The hardware consists of industrial products from several industry manufacturers, including a gantry system from Gudel Inc., a robot system, external axis motors, control technologies and positioners from KUKA Robotics and welding power supplies from Fronius.

SmartTCP developed the software to run the complex robot programming tasks.

The combination of hardware and software produces the flexible and efficient welding cell that allows simultaneous operations, welding and loading or unloading, to run.

The system can deliver multiple axis flexibility for welding a variety of parts that range in size, geometry and welding technologies.

The base system includes nine axes of travel – six robot axes and three gantry axes – with additional manipulators that can add one or two axes as needed to as many as 16 axes in two or more working zones.

Lebel said the system’s best use in an 11 axes configuration in each working zone for in-position continuous welding that results in higher quality and faster welding.

NPK’s Tyrell said the results he has seen in the nine months that his company has used a SmartTCP cell have been positive. The automated welding cell has helped the company to address its shortage of welders, save on labor costs and shorten welding times. The reduced welding times has significantly increased the company’s manufacturing capacity, Tyrell said.

“We’ve been able to bring all the welding work that we had outsourced back in-house. We expect to add another cell in the future,” he added.