Design and test of a robotic cell for stud bolt welding in heat exchangers for SWEP International AB

Abstract: This project targeted automating production steps where stud bolts are welded on a heat exchanger within allowed perpendicularity and position requirements. Until now, this has been a manual process where an operator uses steel templates to position the bolts in the right place and manual welding guns to weld the bolts. The scope of this project is to create a digital model of a robot cell to calculate the coordinates of the bolts and weld them in the correct position using the ABB software RobotStudio, and then test and verify it in a real cell with an actual ABB robot (IRB4600), measuring probe and welding equipment. During the simulation phase the first step was to decide which layout in the cell would be the best to optimise the measuring and welding process and design the gripper to hold the gun and the measuring probe. Then an algorithm to find the edges of the heat exchanger and calculate its center was designed. This point is used as the zero point for the coordinates of the stud bolts. In the verification phase the algorithm created for the simulation had to be optimised and adjusted to the real robot operation.