Welding robots mainly consist of two parts: robots and welding equipment. The robot consists of a robot body and a control cabinet (hardware and software). And welding equipment, taking arc welding and spot welding as examples, consists of welding power supply (including its control system), wire feeder (arc welding), welding gun (pliers) and other parts. For intelligent robots, there should also be sensing systems, such as laser or camera sensors and their control devices.
If the workpiece does not need to be displaced during the entire welding process, a fixture can be used to position the workpiece on the workbench, which is the simplest system. But in actual production, more workpieces need to be displaced during welding to keep the weld seam in a better position (posture) for welding. For this situation, the positioning machine and the robot can move separately, that is, the robot can weld after the positioning machine is positioned; It can also be simultaneous motion, that is, the positioner changes position while the robot welds, which is commonly known as coordinated motion between the positioner and the robot. At this point, the motion of the positioner and the motion of the robot combine to ensure that the movement of the welding gun relative to the workpiece can meet the requirements of both the weld trajectory and the welding speed and welding gun posture. In fact, at this point, the axis of the positioner has become an integral part of the robot, and this welding robot system can have up to 7-20 axes or more.
The latest robot control cabinet can be a combination of two robots that coordinate their movements along 12 axes. One of them is a welding robot, and the other is a handling robot used as a positioner.