The Benefits of Mechanized Welding
Industrial manufacturers and fabricators can make their processes more efficient with mechanized cutting and welding. By mechanizing your processes to involve more automation rather than manual labor, you can drive faster production, reduce production costs, and keep your staff and facility safer. Mechanization also provides greater consistency, producing high-quality results across every job. Mechanized welding processes can lead to improvements in the following:
- Better arc time optimization
- More precise, high-quality welds
- Excellent ROI
Learn more about the benefits of mechanized welding over manual welding and the types of mechanized welding equipment available at Gullco International.
Mechanized Welding vs. Traditional Manual Welding
Traditional welding is highly manual, presenting risks to your staff even if they are highly skilled. Typical risks of manual industrial welding include:
- Tangled hoses
- Burns from the torch
- Pressure to complete jobs too quickly
- Insufficient protective gear
Traditional manual welding is also susceptible to a lot of quality control risks. Contaminated electrodes, inconsistent weld pools or arc lengths, and other deviations from optimal welding techniques can compromise weld quality or lead to assembly failure.
On the other hand, mechanized systems provide much more oversight, control, and safety. You can use mechanized welding equipment to create very consistent welds with minimal manual intervention from operators.
Key Benefits of Mechanized Welding
Mechanized welding does require some manual processes, such as material preparation, component alignment, and supervision, but it represents a key investment in the safety of your personnel and the quality of work. Here are the advantages of mechanized welding processes for the time management, productivity, consistency, and safety of your welding operation:
- Increases arc-on-time by eliminating starts and stops, thereby improving weld deposition rates
- More control over the welding arc, creating more precise welds
- No direct, up-close handling of the tools, which inherently decreases the risk of burns and cuts
- Keeps operators safe from toxic fumes
- Reduced manual material handling due to automation
- Customizable configurations so you have the right welding workflows and settings for any project
Types of Mechanized Welding Equipment
Once you decide mechanized welding equipment is the right next step for your organization, choose the right equipment. Depending on the size and complexity of your operations, different systems have specific applications, compatible materials, techniques, and quality controls.
At Gullco, we specialize in developing high-quality mechanized welding equipment for our clients, with various systems and machines for different use cases and industries. Here is an overview of our most popular solutions.
KAT® 100 Mechanized Welding And Cutting Carriage
We build these entry-level carriages to increase production, quality, and safety from the start. They are easy to use, with basic, intuitive controls, simple setups, and the ability to integrate with most systems quickly.
Self-Propelled Welding Tractors
There are three levels of welding mechanization: none (manual welding), partial/hybrid, and fully autonomous. Our self-propelled welding tractors are fully autonomous, and operators can program them to have specific speeds and torch orientations for repeatable high-quality welds.
Orbital Welding Machines
Weld stationary tubes and pipes easily with a mechanized orbital welding machine. The electrode moves around the stationary cylinder and is ideal for complex tubing configurations or tubes in small, compact spaces that manual welding tools can’t reach.
KAT® Weld Oscillation Automation Carriage
This mechanized welding carriage increases weld quality and overall productivity. Because it’s autonomous, it lowers the risk of defects like partial fusion, inconsistent weld penetration, and overlapping or undercutting.
Quality Mechanized Welding Equipment by Gullco
Mechanized welding presents significant benefits and process improvements for fabricators and manufacturers. Request a quote from Gullco International today to find a mechanized welding solution that fits your business needs and operations.