Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

Comment by contingencies | Hacker News Reader

IMHO manual welding is interesting but ultimately robot arms are coming down so far in price in the near future it's soon going to be more useful to just straight up train people how to specify work for the arms.

Often really substantial experience is required to approach welding problems, including interpreting order intent (quantity and material related concerns such as jig and fixture design, adjacent process speed and cycle time affinities, likelihood of follow-on orders, etc.), interpreting drawings (often made by non-welders and potentially requiring feedback) plus understanding finished workpiece intent and loading, intermediate work holding and handling, welding process selection, shield gas and flow rate selection, manual dexterity and precision, bead material selection, optimal power levels, temperature monitoring, feed rates, environmental safety and pollution concerns, questions of finish including scratch prevention, grinding and polishing, cleaning, and potentially subsequent surface treatment, inspection and testing, etc.

If anyone wants to work on automation for these sorts of fabrication related problems, we will be hiring in a few months.

Doesn't that really only apply to mass production, a LOT of welding is one-off (or few-off) work used to connect parts (which may have been mass produced).

If you mean to actually weld one off parts-- is the sensing technology in place to accomplish that? The speed and feed you go at depends on the ambient conditions and part geometry. Even if so, you have the problem that much welding is and must be done in-situ because the assembly is not transportable. In some cases you could bring in a robot arm, but even where you can that seems like lot of effort vs just sending a welder in.

Traditional manufacturing is described as "low mix, high volume" (ie. same part in great quantities). Modern manufacturing tends towards "high mix, low volume" (ie. different part each time).

This is partly because, ultimately, it is more cost efficient to produce multiple parts using similar processes on the same equipment than to produce all parts on dedicated equipment using a broader mix of processes. It is also partly because outsourcing fabrication makes sense for many people, which means the fabricator themselves is receiving a range of orders that has to be executed in rapid succession on a given equipment line.

While this transition presents a challenge for everyone (design, management, HR, etc.) it is also a huge opportunity, particularly for we software people.

While it saddens me to hear what you're saying, I literally left my career as a blacksmith for embedded because even the interesting bespoke projects are all going to CNC. I'd be interested in your project, sounds like it's a rare intersection of my domains of interest

Awesome, please send me an email. As well as fab, we do a lot of embedded, too.

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