Robotic Pipe Welding with AI Pipe Bot

Pipe welding is considered the toughest welding job and is paid accordingly. You make the "root" weld from the outside, but the weld bead on the inside of the pipe must be defect-free and dimensionally accurate.
There are several types of pipe weld joints. Some of the less common joints, such as square butt keyhole and U grooves, lend themselves to automated welding. But the most common pipe joint is the single-sided V butt open root weld. Open root V butts are also the least repeatable, making it impossible for a robot to weld without adaptive control.
In '82, I took a 6GR open root V butt pipe test with a short arc root and flux core fill and cap. I passed, but I did it by hand. Robots were not an option back then. The technology to measure and compensate for weld joint variations did not exist until a few years ago.
Recent advances in collaborative robots, Universal Robots A/S, laser profiling sensors, Micro-Epsilon, and advanced waveform welding machines, Miller Welds, enable robotic welding of V butt pipe joints.
For my take on the problem, history, and recent advances, see my latest video: lnkd.in/eVP9r6U
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[@ColinMason07]

Awesome stuff, Dan!!

[@jazzonlp]

Bot pipe welding be the future but I think manual operators will be around for a while yet.

[@babcockcopper]

Absolutely awesome! The future is here.

[@derekreed9542]

I know you are pushing product but you are putting a whole lot of good people out of work.

[@alvaroampudia4382]

I don't know if you heard that these are COLLABORATIVE robots, they don't do ALL the work, they do most of the work to have better quality and better productivity, but they still need an operator and a programmer... so the jobs are changing but there will be jobs...

[@user-nn9ny8cq3s]

Please tell me what software used for programming a robot.

[@williamhuang5329]

Hanzhen harmonic drive gear , robot arm gear reducer, over 30 years experience