Hi all, I'm with a small manufacturing business in the U.S. and am looking for paid consultation on a prospective workcell for robotic MIG welding of aluminum. Of course this is the domain of integrator and OEM outfits, but I have to emphasize that we're small...can't get much attention from these companies without shelling out big bucks up-front, it seems.
There are a few fairly-contentious aspects to pulling off the intended application, and I'd like to learn practices/methods to deal with these. For example, the product to be welded has a 1/8"t AL3003 sheet with highly-reflective finish, butted against several pieces of hollow rectangular tube (AL6005-T5, 1/8"wall) around its perimeter. Due to production tolerances from the sheet mills, they are rarely perfectly-square, so if the fabricator butts the pieces starting from one corner and appear square, as he progresses to another corner (as short as 44" away, or as long as 78" away), the joint seam will widen, sometimes up to 3/32" gap. Being relatively-thin walled material here, and reflective, this appears very difficult, but my first presumption is that touch-sensing would be the appropriate operation to mitigate the issue. There are a few others, but won't go into them for now.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, exploring options for automating the dispensing/loading/securing of parts onto the workcell platform, then unloading the welded subassembly from the platform is of interest. So PLC consultation is needed here, too. Using a pick-place robot with interchangeable tooling is a thought.
Of-late I've pondered if these issues can be realistically explored through simulation/offline programming software, such as Octopuz, RoboDK, etc.
Please DM or reply here if such a job would be of interest to you. Thanks in advance