The new BotX Welder, developed by Hirebotics, Red-D-Arc, and Airgas, utilizes a UR10e cobot to address two major hurdles of robotic arc welding: ease of programming and the ease in which a customer can obtain the system without assuming the cost of ownership. There are no installation costs with BotX, and with cloud monitoring, manufacturers pay only for the hours the system actually welds, thereby enabling the manufacturer to hire and fire BotX as business needs dictate. “We chose Universal Robots to power BotX for several reasons,” says Rob Goldiez, co-founder and CEO of Hirebotics. “With Universal Robots’ open architecture, we were able to control, not only wire feed speed and voltage, but torch angle as well, which ensures a quality weld every time,” he says.
Customers can teach BotX the required welds simply via an intuitive app on any smartphone or tablet utilizing a library of welding recipes contained in the BotX software developed specifically for the BotX and optimized to work with Airgas’ ARCAL shielding gas. The complete BotX product offering comes with the UR10e cobot arm, cloud connector, welder, wire feeder, MIG welding gun, weld table, and configurable user-input touch buttons. The BotX is now available to early access customers and is introduced at FABTECH, doing live welding in Airgas’ booth B19043 and in OnShape’s booth A1345 in Chicago, November 11-14, 2019.