Automated Welding Power Sources Significantly Boost Productivity
New power sources provide powerful performances at affordable prices.
Posted: October 20, 2022
Leading manufacturers are working in partnership with fabricators to develop welding technology solutions shops can immediately utilize, keeping their customers happy and contributing to a healthy bottom line. The feedback from customer partners allows manufacturers to tweak their products, creating more reliable and robust power sources and filler metals.
Pulsed Arc Welding Solutions for Coil Termination
AMADA WELD TECH Europe (Puchheim, Germany) offers a full range of pulsed arc welding power supplies for precision joining applications, ensuring exact control and repeatability. These supplies range from lab models with customizable options, to production machines offering streamlined features to match a customer’s exact needs. Every item is designed and built in-house, from equipment for small-scale manual production to fully automated systems.
With a specialist product portfolio developed for precision joining of materials and spanning many industrial sectors, AMADA WELD TECH Europe can uniquely offer the correct technology to suit customers’ specific needs. Each system solution is available with easy-to-program PLC or industrial PC software. Also, each system benefits from SPC integration, automatic alignment, advanced user interfaces, remote diagnostics, CNC motion, robotics, and product transport systems, as required.
The systems are available in 1, 2, 3, and 4 output models to allow for a single power supply in high-speed production automation. Single output standard models include the PA-60P and PA-200P. Multiple output models are available from 20-to-60 amps.
Each unit produces a pulse of accurately controlled current. A specially developed arc start system incorporates a high voltage DC impulse, operating with a stabilizing power supply. This ensures consistent arc ignition with minimal radiated interference. All models offer gas flow control and voltage monitoring, to detect arc failure.
Closed loop techniques ensure stable outputs independent of temperature, cable lengths, and mains supply variations. This is accomplished through transistorized output control and an analogue feedback and drive circuit. This control system responds rapidly to process changes and stabilizes output, ensuring consistency.
HF TIG/Stick Inverter Offers Professional Grade Performance at an Attractive Price
ESAB Corp. (Annapolis Junction, MD) has introduced the Rogue ET 200iP PRO, a HF TIG/Stick inverter with exceptional TIG performance and full-function digital controls at an affordable price. The unit weighs 21.2 pounds –– one-third lighter than competitive units –– and delivers a 200A TIG output at 25% duty cycle. Users include mechanical contractors and those in general fabrication, maintenance and repair, process pipe, food/beverage and more.
With a welding output range of 10-to-200 amps, Rogue ET 200iP PRO gives you the arc control required for delicate welds and the power to run 5/32-inch stick electrodes, as well as the arc characteristics required for all types of stick electrodes, including 6010 and 7018. When procedures call for a TIG root and stick fill passes, the Rogue ET 200iP PRO produces X-ray-quality results.
The Rogue ET 200iP has a pulsed DC TIG output range between 0.1 and 500 Hz pulses per second. Stainless steel fabricators and those working with thin metals or other heat-sensitive applications use pulsed DC TIG to control heat input, narrow the weld bead profile and increase travel speed. It delivers a stable TIG arc down to 10 amps, giving welders the control they need to work on thin metal or delicate components.
The Rogue’s 115–230V primary power flexibility enables users to work in a wide variety of locations. Flexible automatic input voltage compensation ensures a steady welding arc throughout the entire input power range, making it ideal for use with generator power, which often fluctuates.
Rogue ET features power factor correction (PFC), so it draws less primary current. As a result, users can use a smaller circuit breaker and reduce the worry of nuisance trips when welding at full output.
Rogue comes with premium quality accessories, including a SR-B 26 type TIG torch (13 ft. cable), a set of wear parts that includes tungsten electrode, Tweco® Electrode holder (10 ft.), return cable with clamp (10 ft.), shoulder strap, Victor® gas regulator and 115V/230V power adaptor.
New Automated Hercules™ Welding System Available
Miller Electric Manufacturing LLC (Appleton, WI) along with Hobart Filler Metals and Tregaskiss, have released the Hercules single-wire, high-deposition, automated MIG welding system, which boosts welding productivity rates without the expense of adding more automation welding cells.
The system delivers a gain of up to 30% or more in deposition rates and corresponding productivity with no loss of weld quality. Even operations that have optimized their processes and consider themselves at the forefront of high-deposition-rate welding can benefit from the Hercules system.
The Hercules welding system is ideal for medium- to large-manufacturing operations with robotic welding, specifically for those with long welds in the flat and horizontal welding positions. The system has been in a soft introduction phase with targeted Miller customers for several years, and Miller has worked with those customers to integrate the system.
Developed by Miller, Hobart and Tregaskiss, this welding system combines Miller power source and wire-feed technology, a Tregaskiss torch and a specialized Hobart metal-cored wire. The components include:
- Miller power sources and Hercules drive: Auto-Continuum™ 500 and XMT® 450 power sources work together with the Hercules drive to deliver the amperage needed for the system and fast, precise wire-feeding.
- Tregaskiss Hercules torch: The torch has dual contacts that allow two sources of power input, which are crucial for the high-deposition welding process. Created specifically for the Hercules system, the torch’s unique single-wire, water-cooled design maximizes electrical conductivity and optimizes filler metal delivery to the weld puddle.
- Hobart FabCOR® Hercules metal-cored wire: Formulated exclusively for the Hercules system, FabCOR Hercules is the only metal-cored wire that can accommodate faster travel speeds to deliver the system’s higher deposition rates and productivity while maintaining arc stability.
Manufacturing operations can eliminate welding bottlenecks and unlock unutilized capacity with the Hercules system, all without adding more automation welding cells that require additional floor space or bricks and mortar.
The Next Generation of Advanced Welding Technology
OTC DAIHEN (Tipp City, OH) offers the Welbee II, which is suitable for manual or robotic welding. It features a new streamlined digital control panel, as well as an updated digital operator interface and new SmartPulse technology, ready to meet the challenges of the new generation of welding.
The Welbee II incorporates a larger and brighter current and voltage digital display, an LCD screen summarizing welding conditions, access to detailed settings of internal functions, error code descriptions and on-demand help.
The SmartPulse technology eliminates undercut and reduces weld spatter via automatic adjustment of the pulse welding waveform. Wire tip conditioning locked to OTC DAIHEN’s Synchro-feed technology is now available for DC and DC Low Spatter weld modes.
Multiple models of Welbee II are available, with welding modes including DC, DC Pulse, DC Wavepulse and DC Low Spatter mode. The technology tackles all your materials: steel, stainless, aluminum, galvanized, galvanneal, and exotics like titanium, Inconel and CuNi, while incorporating solid wire, flux-cored and metal-cored wires.
Competitively Priced, Premium Copper-Coated Mild Steel Filler Metal
Weldcote (Kings Mountain, N.C.), a division of Zika Group, offers a line of copper-coated mild steel filler metal for general welding applications. The ER70S-6 wire is available in spools for MIG welding applications and cut lengths for TIG welding applications. The wire produces optimum flow and a consistent welding arc, which diminishes weld spatter and offers improved bead finish.
The ER70S-6 wire, which contains higher levels of silicon than other standard grades of MIG wire, provides excellent tolerance against rust and scale and produces high deposit strength. The high-quality properties of the ER70S-6 wire make it ideal for automated welding applications, which require higher tolerances.
The wire is available in new, heavy-duty robust spools that are twice the thickness and number of ribs, 72 at 1/8” versus 36 at 1/16”. The spools are precision wound and covered with Rust-X® copper shield paper wrap to protect against corrosion and extend shelf life. The spools are then shrink wrapped before being shipped in a heavy-duty box. Spools are available in 2-, 11-, 33-, and 44-pound sizes. A 550-pound drum is also available.
The ER70S-6 cut length wire for TIG welding is packaged in both one-pound packages, as well as in four 10-pound tubes in a 40-pound master carton. ER70S-6 wire is used for butt and fillet welding of sheet and plate of various thicknesses for general carbon steel fabrication applications.
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