The company Wagon Service Ostróda Sp. z o.o. (WSO), part of the GATX group, is involved in the production, repair, and modernisation of freight wagons and the regeneration of wagon components. Their main specialisation is railway tank wagons. The factory in Ostróda has been in existence for approximately 150 years. Currently, the company has branches in Ostróda and Płock and employs 350 workers.
“The railway market has been changing very dynamically lately. Given the limited availability of qualified production workers, rising labour costs, and the continuous increase in quality requirements, we believe that automation of production processes in this sector is inevitable,” says Marcin Ostrowski, head of the technological and construction department.
WSO has decided to acquire a welding robot based on a TRACK-FRAME-E rigid frame with a robot that moves along a track and serves two workstations on one side of the track. This system allows a wide range of products to be welded, such as parts of larger structures.
“Our welding robot covers the entire need for welding the load-bearing elements of a wagon frame, such as pivot beams and frontal elements. Additionally, we weld various small frame elements,” adds Tomasz Baworowski, technologist and robot programmer.
The delivered installation fully meets the current production needs of the WSO factory, eliminating manual welding of various components.
Any company that has not previously had experience with automated welding must be prepared for certain organisational changes when implementing a first welding robot installation. For WSO employees, the period just before the robot installation and the first weeks after the start of series production were the most challenging. It was then that they had to pay the most attention to refining production, such as training new employees and improving welding programmes.
“We chose to appoint young employees without experience in manual welding as operators. At every stage of production, there was someone with experience present, who supported the implementation process and simultaneously trained new employees. The new process was quickly and efficiently implemented, and the employees adapted quickly to the new requirements,” notes Marcin Ostrowski.
Wagon Service Ostróda places great emphasis on the production of high-quality products. Products prepared for the welding robot are previously assembled on specially prepared jigs and manually tacked using the TIG method. On the robot, universal jigs are used based on perforated welding tables. This way, the system can be easily converted for different applications.
New programmes created at WSO are programmed offline in the DTPS software, so production is not interrupted. This software is very useful for editing and creating new programmes.
Despite the precise preparation of the products, WSO uses Quick Touch Sensing and the Arc Sensor to detect even the smallest deviations in the shape of the welded product. This ensures that the product welded by the robot meets strict quality standards.
“The automated installation has been used at WSO for over a year now, and so far, we have had no problems with its operation. We want to emphasise the very good communication with the service and programmers of Valk Welding. Valk Welding responds quickly to notifications and helps solve problems remotely, avoiding production downtime”
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