How to choose a suitable industrial robot welding automatic line?

China's automobile industry is experiencing a period of rapid development. Major international automobile brands have invested in building factories in China. Well-known automobile parts manufacturers around these automobile OEMs have also successively built factories in China and continuously invested in new production lines. Domestic automobile manufacturers such as Great Wall Motors, Changan Automobile, Geely, BYD, etc. have also launched new models independently developed and expanded their production scale. China's automobile parts manufacturers are in urgent need of robot production lines with stable quality and higher degree of automation. Under such demand, automated, intelligent and flexible robot automatic production lines will surely lead China's automobile parts industry to a new stage of Industry 4.0 and Made in China 2025. How to choose a suitable industrial robot welding automatic line?

(1) The professional level of production line operators and equipment maintenance personnel. Because a large number of six-axis robots, positioners, automatic fixtures, automatic logistics equipment and PLC control systems are used on the automatic line, higher requirements are placed on the professional level of operators and maintainers. The robot welding automatic line needs to be regularly maintained according to the use requirements, which is related to the service life and failure rate of the production line. When the equipment fails, accurate troubleshooting is required to reduce downtime.

(2) Equipment selection for robot welding lines.

(3) Quality of welded stamping parts. Robot welding automatic lines have higher requirements for the consistency of stamping parts, the consistency of welds after stamping parts are matched, and the gap of welds. Therefore, it is recommended that manufacturers should first improve their own stamping parts level when choosing robot welding automatic lines.

(4) Production line scheme selection and process planning. The following aspects need to be considered when choosing a robot welding automatic line scheme:

a. First of all, the cost of robot welding automatic lines is higher than that of independent robot welding stations, the production line manufacturing cycle is long, and the quality requirements of stamping parts are high. Therefore, for projects with simple product structure, simple process requirements, long production cycle, poor stamping parts quality, small budget, and short construction period, it is recommended to use independent robot welding stations; for products with complex processes, short cycles, high investment, long cycles, and requiring a small number of operators, it is suitable for robot automatic welding lines.

b. Secondly, consider different planning schemes according to the long-term planning and logistics form of the product. For example, a production line with a capacity of 100,000 can be planned as a production line with a capacity of 100,000 at one time, or it can be planned as two production lines with a capacity of 50,000. In terms of logistics form, it is also necessary to consider whether to use bilateral logistics or unilateral logistics, and whether to unload materials from one end or from the middle according to the factory layout of the customer's site. The specific form of the scheme needs to be comprehensively considered based on equipment investment, number of operators, floor space, and automation level. Here is mainly a case. For the scheme using the same fixture on the A/B side of the double-station, it is necessary to consider the debugging error caused by the processing and manufacturing error of the A/B side fixture. If there are many combinations, it is necessary to consider distinguishing the A/B side fixture welding workpieces to avoid the mixed production of the A/B side fixtures causing unstable product quality.

Finally, when planning the automatic line, it is also necessary to consider the buffer and product cooling. The buffer is mainly to reduce the number of automatic line stops, and the cooling is to reduce the impact of welding deformation on product quality.