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In addition to manufacturing metal mesh products, The Expanded Metal Company also manufacture disability ramps. With a significant spike in demand for this product, alongside continued growth across the rest of the business, additional capacity was required to support the company’s growth. After initially exploring an industrial robotic welder, the company decided that a cobot welder would meet the company’s needs and would be more cost effective.
After seeing the benefits of the system at the MACH Exhibition, Ryan Pinder, Operations Manager & Head of Continuous Improvement at The Expanded Metal Company chose to invest in the Olympus Universal Robot Welding Cobot. The installed solution compromised of a Universal Robot UR10e welding system integrated to control the ESAB Aristo Mig 4004i SWF water cooled machine with a DINSE robotic torch package.
The cobot welder has increased efficiency, reduced down time, and improved quality. It has also addressed The Expanded Metal Company’s challenges around variable demands in production, and has addressed issues around recruitment due to it not requiring a qualified welder to operate the system.
The integration of the Universal Robot Welding Cobot has provided impressive benefits to The Expanded Metal Company:
- 4 x productivity - The cobot can produce a fence post in one minute thirty seconds, regardless of size - whereas it would have taken five - six minutes before.
- The quality of the welding is much better with little to zero spatter off the cobot.
- Sped up the manufacturing process by reducing downtime in changeovers.
- Staff moved onto more bespoke jobs which has helped with retention of staff and expansion of the business to take on more bespoke jobs too.