Air conditioner base plate nut projection welding workstatio

1. Customer background and pain points

    Qingdao Gaotong Machinery Co., Ltd. was established in 1996. It specializes in the processing of refrigeration equipment accessories. Soldering has become a new challenge for Qualcomm, the main problems are as follows:

1. Welding efficiency is too low: This product is an air-conditioning base plate component. The single product is large in size, and it is not convenient to grab it manually. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive to weld 4 nuts in a single piece, which cannot meet the production capacity requirements;

2. The operator invested a lot: the original process was three pieces of equipment, one welding machine for one person, and the manual welding was completed. With the increasing number of orders, the company faced high labor costs and production safety risks;

3. Welding quality is not up to standard: multiple welding machines are operated by different personnel, the process parameters of projection welding are completely different from the process arrangement of spot welding, and NG screening cannot be performed manually, which often causes quality problems such as wrong welding of nuts, missing welding, and virtual welding. ;

4. Unable to meet data storage and detection functions: the original process is in the form of a stand-alone machine, without data detection and storage functions, unable to achieve parameter traceability, and unable to meet the company’s goal of moving towards Industry 4.0.

The above problems are very distressing for customers, and they have not been able to find a solution.

2. Customers have high requirements for equipment

Qualcomm found us through our official website, discussed with our sales engineers, and proposed to customize welding machines with the following requirements:

1. Efficiency needs to be improved. It is best to meet the nut projection welding requirements of the product, and the production efficiency of a single piece needs to be increased to more than 2 times the existing one;

2. The operator needs to be compressed, and it is best to control it within 2 people;

3. Tooling needs to be compatible with multiple products, design universal tooling, and reduce the number of tooling;

4. The workstation can match other workstations for online work;

5. To ensure the welding quality, the system automatically matches the welding parameters for different processes of the product, reducing the influence of human factors;

6. The equipment needs to provide parameter detection and data storage functions to meet the data requirements of the factory MES system.

   According to the requirements put forward by customers, the existing ordinary welding machines cannot be realized at all, what should I do?

3. According to customer needs, research and develop customized air-conditioning bottom plate nut projection welding workstation

     According to the various requirements put forward by customers, the company’s R&D department, welding technology department, and sales department jointly held a new project research and development meeting to discuss the process, structure, power feeding method, detection and control method, list key risk points, and do one by one After the solution, the basic direction and technical details are determined as follows:

1. Workpiece proofing test: Anjia welding technologist made a simple fixture for proofing at the fastest speed, and used our existing spot welding machine for proofing test. After the tests of both parties, it met the welding requirements of Qualcomm and determined the welding parameters. , the final selection of intermediate frequency inverter DC spot welding power supply;

2. Robotic workstation solution: R&D engineers and welding technologists communicated together and determined the final robot automatic projection welding workstation solution according to customer requirements, which consists of six-axis robot, projection welding machine, nut conveyor, detection system, and feeding positioning mechanism It is composed of a feeding and conveying mechanism;

3. Advantages of the whole station equipment:

1) The beat is fast, and the efficiency is twice the original: two six-axis robots are used for the handling of tooling and materials, and the welding of the matching projection welding machine reduces the displacement of the two processes and the transfer of materials, and optimizes the path of the process. The overall beat reaches 13.5 seconds per piece, and the efficiency is increased by 220%;

2) The whole station is automated, saving labor, realizing one person and one station management, and solving human-made poor quality: through the integration of spot welding and projection welding, coupled with automatic grabbing and unloading, one person can operate at a single station, two The work station can complete the nut welding of all types of air-conditioning bottom plates, saving 4 operators, and at the same time, due to the realization of intelligent manufacturing and the whole process of robot operation, the problem of poor quality caused by human beings is solved;

3) Reduce the use of tooling and place maintenance costs, and save time: through the efforts of engineers, the workpiece is formed into an assembly on the tooling, which is locked by the cylinder and moved to the spot welding and projection welding stations by the robot for welding, reducing the number of tooling to 2 sets, reducing the use of tooling by 60%, greatly saving the cost of maintenance and placing tooling;

4) The welding data is connected to the MES system to facilitate the analysis of quality data and ensure the welding quality: the workstation adopts bus control to capture the parameters of the two welding machines, such as current, pressure, time, water pressure, displacement and other parameters, and compare them through the curve Yes, transmit the OK and NG signals to the host computer, so that the welding station can communicate with the workshop MES system, and the management personnel can monitor the situation of the welding station in the office.

4. Delivery time: 50 working days.

An Jia discussed the above technical plan and details with Qualcomm in detail, and finally the two parties reached an agreement and signed a “Technical Agreement” as the standard for equipment R&D, design, manufacturing, and acceptance, and signed an equipment order contract with Qualcomm in March 2022 .

4. Rapid design, on-time delivery, and professional after-sales service have won praise from customers!

After confirming the equipment technical agreement and signing the contract, Anjia’s project manager held the production project start-up meeting immediately, and determined the time nodes of mechanical design, electrical design, machining, purchased parts, assembly, joint debugging and customer’s pre-acceptance at the factory , rectification, general inspection and delivery time, and through the ERP system orderly dispatch work orders of each department, supervise and follow up the work progress of each department.

Time passed quickly, and 50 working days passed quickly. Qualcomm’s customized air-conditioning floor projection welding workstation was completed after aging tests. After 15 days of installation, commissioning, technology, operation and maintenance by our professional after-sales engineers at the customer site Training, equipment has been put into production normally and all have reached the customer’s acceptance criteria.

Qualcomm is very satisfied with the actual production and welding effect of the projection welding workstation for the bottom plate of the air conditioner. It helped them solve the problem of welding efficiency, improve the welding quality, save labor costs and successfully connect to the MES system. At the same time, it laid a solid foundation for their unmanned workshop. It has laid a solid foundation and gave us Anjia great recognition and praise!

5. It is Anjia’s growth mission to meet your customization requirements!

    The customer is our mentor, what material do you need to weld? What welding process is required? What welding requirements? Need fully automatic, semi-automatic, workstation, or assembly line? Please feel free to ask, Anjia can “develop and customize” for you.