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Universal Robots Takes Cobot Welding to the Next Level at FABTECH

In Booth B17012 Universal Robots (UR) (Ann Arbor, MI), the market leader of collaborative robots, is ready to show unique new offerings for metal fabricators including Hirebotics’ new Cobot Welder and Vectis Automation’s Heavy-Duty Water-Cooled Cobot Welding Tool and Cobot Hardfacing Tool.

Posted: August 14, 2021

Booth B17012: The new for-hire BotX Welder — developed by Hirebotics and utilizing Universal Robots’ UR10e collaborative robot arm — lets manufacturers automate arc welding, handling even small batch runs not feasible for traditional automation. Shaun Bruce, robotic and automation area lead at Processed Metal Innovators (PMI) in Bloomers, Wis., programmed the BotX Welder in just half an hour.

Booth B17012: The Vectis Cobot Welding Tool is a ready-to-weld UR+ Application Kit that is plug-and-play with cobots from Universal Robots. UR+ Application Kits provide hardware, software and components designed to streamline deployment of the most popular cobot applications. Designed to boost productivity by reducing the learning curve, deployment time, risk and cost of robotic welding, the Cobot Welder comes with an intuitive interface directly integrated to the UR cobot’s teach pendant that allows end users with no robotics experience to program the system.

Booth B17012: “Most of our shop probably wouldn’t consider themselves a programmer of any sort,” said Mike Gillin, operations manager and certified welder at MT Solar in Montana, which deployed Vectis Automation’s Cobot Welder, powered by Universal Robots. “But just about everybody out of curiosity has gone by and taken a turn. The nice thing is you don’t have to be a welder necessarily — that part is already figured out for you.”

The new offerings are all integrated with e-Series, Universal Robots’ flagship line of cobots.

Hirebotics’ Cobot Welder is a complete, user-friendly cobot welding system that enables painless automated welding deployments. The Cobot Welder is a major leap forward in easy-to-use welding automation that combines industrial grade robot welding functionality with consumer level ease-of-use at a phenomenal price point. FABTECH attendees will experience hands-on how easy it is to teach new parts and welds using the ingeniously simple Cobot Welder cellphone application that runs on Hirebotics’ cloud-based Beacon software platform.

Heavy-duty welds are now possible to perform with cobots thanks to the Water-Cooled Heavy-Duty Cycle version of Vectis Automation’s popular Cobot Welding Tool. The welder will be showcased on Vectis’ new 48-inch × 48-inch XL cart, which handily fits both power supply, wire feeder and chiller. The Cobot Welding Tool, that took FABTECH by storm at its debut in 2019, is a portable, safe, versatile, and extremely user-friendly solution. Vectis’ Let’s Weld Together^TM intuitive programming interface is accessible directly through the UR cobot’s own teach pendant. The Cobot Welding Tool showcased at FABTECH will feature the new MultiPass Software Feature and ArcPilot™ Through-The-Arc Seam Tracking. The solution is now not only compatible with Miller welding equipment but can be integrated with Lincoln and Fronius welding equipment, too.

Vectis Automation also becomes the first Universal Robots partner in North America to use a UR cobot for hardfacing, the metalworking process where harder or tougher material is applied to a base metal. At Vectis’ own FABTECH booth B17054, the company will show new UR cobot powered plasma cutting as well, featuring Vectis’ Cobot Cutting Tool with Hypertherm PowerMax cutting equipment.

FABTECH attendees looking for flexible, intelligent machine loading solutions will be intrigued by Universal Robots’ ActiNav™, a new system showcased at the UR booth combining intelligent vision, real-time autonomous motion control with Universal Robots’ world-leading cobots. Before ActiNav, solutions for unstructured picking and placing of parts into machines were solely focused on the vision aspect, often requiring additional programming to bridge the gap from “pick” to “place” — especially if the “place” is not just dropping into a box but accurately inserting parts into fixtures for further processing.

ActiNav changes all that, combining real-time autonomous motion control, Universal Robots’ cobots, vision and sensor systems in one seamless Application Kit that solves the random bin picking challenge in machine tending applications. At FABTECH, ActiNav will pick metal parts randomly jumbled in bins and correctly insert them into a machine. Powering ActiNav is the new enhanced version of UR’s best-selling UR10e cobot featuring 25 percent more payload capacity with the ability to lift 12.5kg (27.55lbs), providing customers with exciting new deployment capabilities.

www.universal-robots.com