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A complete trailer body welded in 24 hours

Over five years ago, the Northern Irish trailer manufacturer BMI Trailers implemented its first welding robot for welding subassemblies, also the first Valk Welding welding robot in Northern Ireland. Following the success of this move, they decided last year to invest in a second, impressive installation. With the new robot, the company now welds the complete body structure of its waste ejector trailers, both the inside and outside, within 24 hours. As a result, BMI Trailers has expanded its capacity and is less dependent on the difficult availability of manual welders. However, this has not been without its difficulties, as managing director Brendan McIlvanna points out: "Automating welding production at this level is definitely a challenge."

BMI Trailers

BMI's first welding robot was set up specifically for the aluminium sidewalls, floors, partitions, and backdoors of walking floor trailers. "This proved to be a success and a good investment for us," begins Mr McIlvanna. "After only six months we had achieved full control of the welding process, significant improvements in weld quality and increased capacity. We owe this in part to the high-quality service and software support from Valk Welding. That is why we dared to accept the challenge of a second welding robot installation with them."

Two separate production lines

BMI Trailers is the largest manufacturer of waste transfer trailers, also known as ejectors, in Europe. The growing demand for this type of trailer and the shortage of qualified welders were the driving forces for further automation of their welding production. "With a second welding robot installation, we wanted to be able to completely weld the monocoque body structure of the waste ejector trailers with a high degree of flexibility", says the managing director. "And because of the large dimensions, we also had to build a new dedicated workshop facility. This allowed us to immediately adapt the workflow so that the aluminium parts could be welded in parallel with the steel parts."

Impressive in size

Valk Welding presented a concept where the entire monocoque body structure is built and assembled on one side, and then rotated to the other side to weld both the inside and outside as a complete unit. This concept was eventually realised in a YR-YXZ-RL-FH Track, equipped with a suspended TL-2000WGH3 welding robot at a 16m track and a reach of 4.1m in width. A sunken floor was also required to allow the body structure to rotate over 360º. "All in all, a mega-sized installation and a major investment", says Mr McIlvanna.

A complex task

According to BMI Trailers, welding the entire body structure in a non-stop process is certainly not a simple task: "The complexity lies mainly in the programming, the number of welding points and compensating for deviations in the weld seam position. We can now automate the programming work as much as possible with the QPT (Quik Programming Tool) software, developed by Valk Welding. This software makes it possible to copy parts of programs within the CADCAM DTPS system using macros. In addition, Valk Welding uses its ARC-EYE CSS seam tracking system to ensure that the robot follows the weld seam exactly in case of position deviations. This corrects any deviation in real time with a laser sensor next to the welding torch."

Worth the wait?

The return on investment (ROI) for this project was longer than expected. Brendan McIlvanna explains: "A year after we had the system up and running, we asked Valk Welding for additional support to refine everything we had programmed ourselves." Did this detract from the results? Definitely not. "After 18 months, everything worked perfectly," he reveals, "which means that we can now weld the entire body structure in 24 hours non-stop." Thanks to the collaboration between Valk Welding's Irish and Dutch employees and BMI's programmers, a solid knowledge base has been built up. This enables BMI to now carry out the programming of the complex products and to program subsequent products independently.

www.bmitrailers.com

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