Steel and aluminum welding with TPS/i
Safety Technologies, United States
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Jared and Chuck Fanslow from Safety Technologies, Red Wing, Minnesota
"We design and engineer our products, so consequently we're two very critical guys. And honestly, on this Fronius product, I don't think we've come up with one thing that could be improved upon. We've had it for a year now, and you know how with a new car that excitement and newness wears off after a while? With this machine it just seems like it gets better and better the more experience I get with it."
REQUIREMENT
The design of the equipment requires that no spatter interfere with the operation of the magnetic sensors which rotates and changes the sign and is controlled by a single operator from a safe difference away from the unit. Any missed spatter from fabrication can cause the most damage and problems with the sensors might not show up for months down the road. In addition the main product, the AutoFlagger™, uses both steel and aluminum in a variety of thicknesses, which requires many different types of welds per unit. The company also offers a three-year warranty that provides on-site service for the first year, Safety Technologies needs to make sure their product is spatter free.
SOLUTION
The Fronius TPS/i proved to be the ideal solution for this welding application. Not only could the product switch easily between manual and robotic welding, it significantly reduced spatter even in manual welding. With the new Fronius Jobmaster torch, they can set and save parameters for a specific weld, and every time it performed the same. In addition to the convenience of switching jobs right on the torch, the touchscreen interface on the welder allowed them to save jobs with names and dates they will understand later. The machine was designed with the welder in mind, but did it solve the spatter and weld quality issues? Here is what the owners say “Before, we’d spend forty-five minutes cleaning up welds with a scraper and wire brush. Then when the trailer came back from the paint shop there, right in the middle of everything, would be this speck of spatter,” said Chuck. “Now we get done welding, and there’s almost no spatter. What spatter there is can almost be wiped off with a rag.”