New approaches in the SME sector: Galvanizing plant expands its portfolio with welding cell

Few galvanizing plants also weld steel parts. Their core competence is hot-dip or centrifugal galvanizing to protect steel parts from corrosion. But in Sulz am Neckar in the Black Forest, Verzinkerei Sulz GmbH offers a lot more than that with its welding robot and cell. No one who sees the KR CYBERTECH nano at work would think this is unusual. With ease and precision, the robot uses a welding device to join an octagonal prism to a compact steel plate, completing two welding processes in a mere 90 seconds. An employee removes the finished products and replaces them with two new ones. “The quality of the weld seams is outstanding,” said Bernd D. Euschen, Managing Director of Verzinkerei Sulz, who is delighted with the robot-based solution featuring the KR CYBERTECH nano welding robot.

Euschen admits that this approach was unusual for his industry: “We certainly don’t know of any other galvanizing plant in Germany that has a welding robot.” Nevertheless, the potential order sounded interesting, and the opportunity to cut out thousands of transportation kilometers and a whole lot of CO2 in the future sounded very appealing. So Euschen and his team decided to help out a good customer and to be a company that focuses on resource-efficient manufacturing. And just like that, Verzinkerei Sulz, with nearly five decades of galvanizing experience, took on a new challenge.

Bernd D. Euschen added, “We needed a compact system. We wanted to take our first steps toward robotic welding, and thereby learn the ropes and gain expertise. Safety also was important.” The KUKA team responsible for the job had expertise in welding application, which proved very helpful. The system integrator collaborates with many companies in the sheet metal processing industry and knows the industry inside out, which also proved beneficial. These advantages helped yield the right solution for Verzinkerei Sulz and its customer.

Verzinkerei Sulz chose a compact cell that measures 3,980 mm long, 2,365 mm wide and 2,445 mm high, and offers plenty of power despite its small footprint. The cell uses a KR CYBERTECH nano, a slim robot with an extremely small interference radius, the smallest in-line wrist in its robot class, high repeatability and great versatility. For the welding system, Euschen and Welle chose the TPS 400i from Fronius, which is as reliable as it is communicative. Euschen is pleased with the manual rotary table as a positioner, which accommodates the welding fixtures, and the KR C4 small size robot controller. Cycle times and the way the weld seams are set were checked in advance using KUKA.Sim software. Then Euschen looked for and found someone on his team to load and unload the cell, hired a new employee with programming skills, and they were off.

Verzinkerei Sulz employees were happy to support the decision to integrate a welding robot. “We hired new employees for the welding cell because we knew we had to build up expertise,” Euschen explained. “Overall, our employees take a highly positive interest in the automation solution. They can see that we are breaking new ground and securing the future of the facility.” Meanwhile, the same major customer whose extensive jobs prompted acquisition of the welding robot promises that new orders will follow. Other potential customers also have come knocking. Bernd D. Euschen and his team, together with KIWI-Automations, already are busy planning other automation solutions with KUKA.