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First robot, high benefits

When you sell your products successfully worldwide, but the competition is strong and a shortage of skilled welders causes capacity problems, the step to welding robot automation is obvious. The Irish baler manufacturer MACFAB took that step and increased production of the most popular model by 250%. “Without the robot, we would have missed a lot of sales,” says Dane Mc Mahon.

Together with his father, mother and brother, Dane Mc Mahon is a co-owner of the familyowned MACFAB company which, with 50 employees, produces up to 1,800 balers a year and is a serious player in the global market. “In order to be able to give our suppliers a better competitive price, we wanted to reduce the production time. To this end, we invested in a Valk Welding robot installation with 2 workstations in an E-frame setup. Despite a tough learning curve, the benefits are high”.

MacFab

Invest in good jigs

First of all MACFAB improved the existing weldin jig for the most popular model in order to ensure that the robot is offered perfectly closing seams. “The advantage of this is that we were able to weld the complete housing of the baler directly without tacking. Clamping the housing and doors takes 45 minutes, after which the robot is doing the weldingjob in 50 minutes. This allowed us to increase the capacity from 2 to 5 balers in one day”.

High repeat accuracy

MACFAB also welds the hydraulic tanks for the balers with the welding robot. “Previously, each tank had to be checked for leak-tightness. Now we carry out this test random and the repeating accuracy is so high that all the tanks are leakfree”.

Further scaling up

With the commissioning of the welding robot, more space has been created to further improve production efficiency. Most balers are now produced in a one-piece-flow concept. The next step is to further scale up production without compromising quality. “While the welding robot installation on the E-frame setup can be used universally and flexible, we are now looking together with Valk Welding at a multi-axis system for larger models. But all that step by step!
www.macfab.com

First robot, high benefits

Without the robot we would have missed a lot of sales.

Dane Mc Mahon

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