The role of automation to solve the imminent squeeze for infrastructure
Australia and New Zealand will soon be facing a demand for infrastructure. According to Weld Australia, ANZ has a $237bn pipeline of infrastructure spend, and it is predicted that by 2030, Australia will be short 70,000 skilled welders to deliver the critical energy, defence, rail & infrastructure required to fuel this growth. Fabrication shop capacity restraints; issues resulting from supply chain shortages; competition from overseas; and declining profit margins are all contributing factors. Fabrication shops serving a number of industries are looking at robotic welding to help solve this challenge, and are searching for a path to automation.
Before a fabrication shop can proceed on making a decision on an automation solution, fabrication shops need to examine key issues such as production mix, infrastructure needs, human resource requirements and ultimately, the return on investment. They need to choose pipe welding automation systems for their fabrication shops that will help them achieve consistent, high-quality welds, while increasing their shop productivity and helping them get ahead in an increasingly competitive market.
“The fabrication shop owner should consider how they are going to win more projects and grow their business while facing shortages of parts and labour, especially in the context of a potential recession ahead,” said CEO Soroush Karimzadeh, of Novarc Technologies Inc. (North Vancouver, Canada.), a full-stack robotics company specialising in the design and commercialisation of cobots and A.I. systems for robotic welding applications.
Novarc’s Spool Welding Robot (SWR) is a welding cobot (collaborative robot) designed specifically for pipe, small pressure vessels and other types of roll welding, that provides pipe fabrication shops with a smart solution to promote safety, reduce costs, increase productivity and improve the weld quality.
An example of a fabrication shop that has benefited from Novarc’s SWR is Metropolitan Mechanical Contractors (MMC) which has been providing services to design complete mechanical systems including HVAC, chiller and boiler systems, plumbing, sheet metal fabrication, and service/maintenance to a number of commercial facilities located throughout the USA (specifically, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin). In business since 1963, the company has completed projects for the Mall of America, Target Center, Target Field and the Xcel Energy Center.
“The projects we work on vary a lot. Specific jobs typically require a percentage for X-ray and ultrasound testing. Sometimes a job is 100% X-Ray, and sometimes 10%. What was important for us was to improve the quality and consistency of our welds,” said Corey Hagerty, Pipefitting Shop Foreman at MMC.
MMC purchased one Novarc SWR in 2022 and this move to automation has made a world of difference in weld quality and capacity.
“Before implementing the SWR, we typically had three to four guys welding, depending on the project, and we averaged from 60-80 Factored Diameter Inches (FDI) a day. Currently, we’re doing 200-250 FDI a day on the SWR, and we even achieved 290 in one day,” says Hagerty. “The SWR has helped with our capacity on the larger projects, and that’s definitely where we have shone.”
Since bringing the SWR into the fabrication shop, MMC has been able to realize significant productivity gains: achieving 250 Factored Diameter Inches per shift; increasing their pipe welding capacity; achieving 0% repair rates; and, reducing the dependency on highly skilled welders.
Besides improving weld quality, the SWR reduced MMC’s dependency on highly skilled welders due to the global labor shortage.
But Novarc’s SWR doesn’t abandon the human operator. Instead, it works alongside the welder, allowing those with less skill and experience to successfully take on a job that only senior welders could perform previously. And the results? Welds with greater precision, accuracy and speed, and a never before achieved balance of quality and productivity.
“We have an individual that was a pretty skilled welder in the field of stick welding, and he didn’t have a significant amount of experience in wire, but he just obtained a certification with wire and we’ve been able to put him on the SWR. It’s been pretty seamless to be able to put a junior-level welder on the SWR, and achieve high-quality welds,” says Hagerty.
MMC appreciated the technical support to the welders as well. “The Novarc Academy was also a great help. I had walked through the training sessions myself, and I think that it took out a lot of the unknown and the pessimistic views that a lot of welders can have towards it. The fact that you can override it, interact with it, and make adjustments on the fly is a huge benefit. I fully believe that’s the benefit to Novarc over the other semi-automatic processes,” says Hagerty.