African Fusion March 2022

Yaskawa SA’s exciting new opportunities

A new vision for welding automation affordable, collaborative and green AfricanFusion talks toYaskawaSouthernAfrica’sMD, AndrewCrackett, about exciting newopportunities for those in general industry seeking to improve the productivity, quality and efficiency of their welding processes, while also taking better care of workers, reducing waste and better protecting the environment. and more affordable than ever,” he tells African Fusion .

Y askawa’s first objective of Vision 2025, the company’s global roadmap for its automation offering, is to ex- pand its core business of motion control and robotics into a more diverse range of markets and applications. “For many decades, our welding robots have been widely adopted by mass producers, most notably those in the automotive industry. Now, however, robotic solutions make muchmore senseandcaneasilybe justified for a much wider range of manufacturing task,” says Andrew Crackett of Yaskawa Southern Africa. “Wherever we see a welder loading a jig to manually weld a batch of components, we now see an opportunity to automate this production soas to raise the company’s efficiency, productivity and weld quality – and robot welding equipment is simpler

it is to put robots to work,” says Crackett. The Weld4Me robot is ‘taught’ by a welder who shows it exactly how to move across a joint, with respect to torch angles, welding speeds and parameters. It takes all the complexity out of programming a typi- cal industrial robot,” he explains, adding that this brings the consistent quality of roboticwelding to anordinarywelding bay, helpingmanual welders that are producing 20, 30 or 100 identical components. Also advancing Yaskawa’s drive tomeet general industrial needs, is the newMOTO- MAN YRC1000 robot controller. Compact and powerful, this new multi-axis and multi-tasking controller can coordinate themotion of up to eight robots and a total of 72 motion axes – where robot systems are being used with positioners, tracks or gantries, for example.

Instead of simply selling individual ro- botic units, though, he says the new focus is on flexible systems that meet a full range of customer needs. “We can provide robot systems that can collaboratewith humans, for example,” he says, citing Yaskawa’s Weld4Me collaborative welding solution as an example. Weld4Me is a fully integrated mobile robot welding system designed as a sup- port tool for welders. “We want South African manufactures to see how easy it is to use these systems in a normal welding cell. I want welders who are being coded at training schools such as the SAIW to have access to using one of our Weld4Me systems, so that when they are back in industry, they will remember how simple

When high volume repetitive work is being done, using a YRC1000 controller with Sigma 7 Yaskawa Robot will significantly reduce cycle times and productivity.

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March 2022

AFRICAN FUSION