Offline programming for short batch robotic welding

Robotics based automation has many advantages over both manual operation and dedicated hard automation. In practice however the robot programming overhead and high cost of dedicated jigging are serious impediments to its use for short production runs. Offline programming packages offer an attractive alternative to reduce programming time and robot down time, however many of the available packages are fairly complex and treat the geometric programming and welding operation separately. The paper will describe the development of alternative approaches and the evaluation of an integrated offline robotic welding package (RinasWeld) which addresses these issues and makes low volume robotic welding of complex fabrications viable.