Thank you for this. This is news to me....any ideas of the names of such companies?Many specialist welding companies do them for clients, many mass production items with basic joints often use them for reliability and consistency and add magic eyes for stop and start of the welds.
This was brilliant and a lot of food for thought. Thank you.Its certainly possible.
If you want cnc then you would want some sort of protection for all the cnc parts against weld splatter so take that into account if you are looking to buy something and convert it.
You may need to make the bed heavier so you could clamp parts down to prevent warping.
Unless all the parts are on the same plane then you will need some sort of jig, either to accurately tack them manually first or locate them in for welding.
You then need to have the capability in the machine to avoid hitting the item/jig when running.
Basic weld/no weld control would be simple, just a relay across the torch switch wires. More advanced stuff, not so simple, main issue would be controlling the torch angle as the correct angle when going north/south would be completely wrong going south/north and when you tried going east/west the torch would be facing away from the weld.
It might well be possible to make a gimbled torch holder, either electrical control (programmable) or sprung loaded it gets pulled to the correct orientation before the axis moves.
Fault detection is another issue, if a bit of splatter hits the tip and slows the wire feed speed how do you detect that?
How do you change power/wire feed rates?
If you have 3phase you can probably find a welder with cnc interface at a decent price, might make things easier to communicate with.
Another issue would be the wire feed. I don't think you would get away with running a long mig torch and feeding it through the gantrys like you would run the usual control cables. I think at the least you would need to have a wire feeder hanging above the machine or maybe a spool gun mounted on the gantry. Any extra weight or drag might meen you need a heavier/larger machine to base it on.
Also, do you actually want cnc control? What sort of parts are you making? Cnc is good as once you have programmed a run it is quick to load different items and change runs for them.
If you are only welding a few types of item it may be quicker/easier/better to make decitcated positioners for them but it depends on what you want to weld.
If I was going to make one I think I would be looking at a robotic arm as a starting point unless the jobs would obviously be better done another way.
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Wow!! Any chance of a video, please?I played around with my plasma cnc, replaced the torch with the mig's and it works superb when using a synergic mig
Wow!! Any chance of a video, please?
I played around with my plasma cnc, replaced the torch with the mig's and it works superb when using a synergic mig
you could 3d print ,,, only in metal ,, now theres a thought.
you could 3d print ,,, only in metal ,, now theres a thought.
thisoldtony does a video on a setup like that...it didn’t work out great