ABIBLOG USA: ABICOR BINZEL's Welding Blog

When considering an automated welding process, fully or semi-automated, it is important to consider and compare the advantages and disadvantages of both for your operation, and how well each may (or may not) integrate into your established welding process. Sometimes, deciding one way or the other is very clear based on the kinds of welds being performed, and other times it’s a matter of how much productivity you need to meet your goals.

In fabrication, productivity is everything; anytime you have the opportunity to make your welding process more efficient and cost effective, you should consider that direction, and welding tractors do exactly that. Considering ways to improve productivity can be frustrating, so we’ve done the work for you.

Hard automation in the past has always been about joystick controllers and a birds nest operator controlling the movement of the gantry or positioning system to guide the welding arc through the weld piece. And incorporating seam tracking into this solution? Leave that to the robots.

Today, however, optical seam tracking is finding itself now more than ever a real solution and added value to those hard automation processes, and leading old-school, analog welding operations to look at seam tracking technology in a different light.

I've been in the welding industry for something going on 40 years. I've seen a lot, and to this day I still see a lot of welding operations out there that put some crazy contraptions on their welding fixtures to get their welds done. Some of them make sense for the applications, but a lot of times they're doing it to their own detriment.