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Automation leads the way to efficient welding of excavator buckets

Sjørring Maskinfabrik used to be reluctant to touch the production of its excavator buckets. Now the company has completely switched to robotic automation and has recently been able to prove that it is profitable.

Sjørring Maskinfabrik

A product that used to be manufactured in countries with much lower wages than Denmark is now part of Sjørring Maskinfabrik A/S’s portfolio. Last year, the welding specialist from Thy in Northwest Jutland was taken over by the Swedish company Steelwrist. This also meant the complete takeover of Steelwrist’s bucket production, including their range of smaller and more price-sensitive excavator buckets up to 1,500mm in length. Calculations had been made beforehand that the use of robotic welding would make it possible to compete with manufacturers in low-wage countries.

Results in practice

Calculations are one thing, but the results in practice can be quite different. “Now we have real production data showing that it has indeed turned out as we had envisioned,” says production manager Jens Holm, “with a cost reduction of 23 percent compared to manual welding.” The great results were achieved based on a project led by welder and project manager John Yde Hove, during which the company installed two robotic welding cells in June in cooperation with Valk Welding Denmark.

More flexibility with compact welding robots

The project involves two compact TRACK-FRAME-C drop centre solutions with Panasonic welding robots and ARC-EYE adaptive technology. “The cells are shielded to optimise the comfort of our operators,” says John Yde Hove, “and it is possible to move offline programs from cell to cell at operator level [following the principle of Valk Welding’s Shop Floor Control, ed. This offers great flexibility, as the operators can make their own decisions and do not have to plan the work two weeks in advance to get it done on time, as was previously the case.”

A third investment

The new investment also stems from the company’s experience with two larger Valk Welding installations, which have been used for the production of loader buckets since 2012. Jens Holm adds: “We have had good experiences with Valk Welding systems in the past, and this project is a new approach for us, so we are constantly learning.”

Innovation needed

Achieving a sustainable setup has been a challenge for the company, say the two employees at Sjørring Maskinfabrik. Jens Holm: “Because we are dealing with a product where the margins are smaller than what we are used to, it has taken a lot of innovation to find processes that allow us to remain profitable. On the construction side, we have worked a lot on the fixturing of the part, which is based on the same coupling point, and now operators can use a simple but efficient lifting trolley to position the items, instead of having to use a slower crane process.”

A new way of thinking

According to John Yde Hove, by far the biggest change has been the way of thinking. He says: “We now have to work with multiple welding levels, where, for example, visual defects are not a problem as long as it remains correct. Whereas we did not accept downwards welding on our loader buckets, this is now a possibility to lay the final welds that are difficult to reach. Downtime is extremely costly.” He says the next step is to fully implement the ARC-EYE adaptive welding process so that any corrections can be made by the welding cell rather than the operator: “This product simply needs to be automated from start to finish.”

www.sjorring.com

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