I have a KR 16-2 sitting in the corner collecting dust for about a year now. I also have a product which requires welding and is fairly low volume. Typically it would not be a worthwhile endeavor to automate the welding. However, the welding is the largest headache in the making of the project and is what pushes out my lead time the furthest. It's also the largest expense. My thought was to attempt to use the robot to eliminate/alleviate the headaches associated with the welding process. I realize there may be other headaches that this introduces but it can't hurt to automate if it's reasonable.
What I'd like to do is a poor man's robotic welding setup. I have a fixture for the welding of my product. I'd like to integrate that with my fixture table, strap a mig gun to the robot and program the robot to weld it. I would like to hear your suggestions on the easiest/cheapest way to accomplish this (or fail quick). Roughly speaking I envision that I could get away with making some sort of clamp to secure the MIG gun to the robot and control the contacts by wiring from an Ethercat IO module to the welder (Lincoln Power MIG 256). I would assume a proper welding unit would have IO to detect faults during the welding process which would allow the robot to stop what it is doing and raise an alarm. Perhaps there is a way to do this by monitoring the voltage? Anyways, I would just like to get some feedback.