READOS / Manufacturing / KEVOS® original book
Welding Automation by the Numbers
From the wire feeder to the robot cell: self-regulating arcs, travel and heat, fixtures, payback, programming, sensing, monitoring, guarding and people
Automate welding with numbers: levels of automation, the self-regulating arc, travel speed and heat input, fixtures and fit-up, robot cell payback, programming, sensing, monitoring, safety and skills.
Start readingAbout this book
Most welding is still done by hand, and much of it should be. But a growing share of repeated welding, in trailers, frames, brackets, tanks, pipe and every kind of manufactured steel product, is done with the help of machines: wire feeders that keep the arc fed, carriages that carry the torch at a steady speed, positioners that turn the work, and robots that make the whole weld. Each step takes some part of the work out of the welder’s hands and makes it repeatable. Each also costs money, demands better parts, and changes who does what in the shop. Deciding which steps pay is one of the most consequential decisions a fabricator makes.
This book is for fabrication managers, welding engineers and owners who are deciding what to mechanise or automate. It assumes a working knowledge of welding. It explains, with numbers, the levels of automation, the self-regulating arc that made wire feeding work, how travel speed governs heat and weld size, why automation needs repeatable parts and fixtures, how a robot cell pays back, how programming and batch size change the sums, how sensors and monitoring keep automated welds right, how cells are guarded, and what people and skills an automation plan needs.
Early manuals as a starting point
Welding automation is older than most people think. Hamilton and Oberg’s Electric Welding of 1918 described a semi-automatic resistance welding machine on which one operator welded the tangs of garden rakes to their backs at several thousand welds in a day, and automatic machines that made most of the chain then produced. H. A. Hornor’s Spot and Arc Welding of 1920 quoted Harry D. Morton, an inventor of automatic arc welding machines, explaining how an arc fed with wire at a constant rate keeps its own length steady within limits, and how Morton widened those limits with controls governed by the arc itself. Morton reported welding several times faster than by hand. The Davis-Bournonville course of 1919 described machines that welded whole pipe joints with a ring of flame.
Their observations, on equilibrium between wire feed and burn-off, on the effect of a few degrees of torch angle, on how much faster and steadier a machine could be, are the foundations of modern welding automation. Each chapter takes one of them and works it through for a modern fabricator.
The running case
This is an illustration. A fabricator in a regional manufacturing town makes trailer chassis, agricultural implement frames and a range of brackets and small weldments for local manufacturers, with about twenty welders on manual and semi-automatic gas metal arc welding. Its owner is considering mechanised carriages for long seams, positioners for the larger frames, and a robot welding cell for the brackets, and wants to know which will pay, what they will demand of the shop, and how to bring the welders along.
The fabricator, its products, customers, prices and results are invented for teaching. They are not KEVOS® work. Robot cells must be designed, installed and guarded to the robot standards and the work health and safety laws, by people competent to do so.
How to use the book
Chapter 1 sets out the levels of automation. Chapter 2 explains the self-regulating arc, and Chapter 3 travel speed and heat input. Chapter 4 covers fixtures, positioners and fit-up. Chapter 5 works out the payback of a robot cell, and Chapter 6 the effect of programming and batch size. Chapter 7 deals with sensing and adaptive control, Chapter 8 with monitoring and quality data, Chapter 9 with guarding and safety, and Chapter 10 with people, skills and the automation plan. Every chapter ends with an exercise and its worked answer.
Limits and professional responsibility
This book is educational. Its prices, rates and paybacks are illustrations; real projects need quotations, trials on the actual parts and the advice of competent integrators. Robot systems are guarded and validated to the robot safety standards and the work health and safety laws, and welding procedures for automated welding are qualified to the welding standards that apply to the product.
An original treatment
READOS covers arc welding in Arc Welding by the Numbers, fixture design in Fixtures That Repeat, and resistance welding machines in Resistance Welding by the Numbers; this book links to them rather than repeating them. The explanations, the fabricator case, the calculations, figures and exercises are original KEVOS® writing. The historical sources are public-domain works in the United States; their ideas are summarised in new words, and none of their text, tables or illustrations is reproduced.
Who this book is for
Fabrication managers, welding engineers, production supervisors and owners of small and mid-sized fabricators who are deciding what to mechanise or automate, and want to judge it with numbers.
What you will learn
- Place a welding operation on the scale from manual to adaptive robotic, and see what each step changes.
- Explain the self-regulating arc and calculate deposition from wire feed speed.
- Relate travel speed and its consistency to heat input, weld size and over-welding.
- Calculate fixture cost per part, robot cell payback and the effect of batch size and programming time.
- Plan sensing, monitoring, guarding and the people a welding automation project needs.
Inside this book
Chapters
- 01Levels of welding automationPlace welding on the scale from manual to adaptive robotic, see what each step takes from the welder and what it demands of the parts, and compare arc-on time and output at each level.
- 02The self-regulating arc and wire feedSee how wire fed at a constant speed into a constant-voltage arc keeps its own length steady, calculate deposition from wire feed speed, and see why stick-out and torch angle matter to a machine.
- 03Travel speed, heat input and over-weldingCalculate heat input from voltage, current and travel speed, see how unsteady manual travel spreads weld size and heat, and price the over-welding that a steady machine travel speed removes.
- 04Fixtures, positioners and fit-upFind how closely a robot needs the joint to be where its program expects, stack up the tolerances of cut, bent and fixtured parts, price fixtures per part, and use positioners to put every weld flat.
- 05Robot cell paybackBuild a robot welding cell's business case from capital, the saving per hour of use and the hours it will really run, see why utilisation decides payback, and test the case with present value.
- 06Programming, changeover and batch sizePrice the programming of each new part by teach pendant and offline, charge each changeover to its batch, find the batch size below which the robot loses money, and plan to keep batches large.
- 07Sensing and adaptive controlCompare touch sensing, through-arc and laser seam tracking and vision, price the cycle time each adds, see when sensing beats better parts, and how adaptive control widens a robot's tolerance.
- 08Monitoring and quality dataRecord current, voltage and wire feed on every automated weld, set limits that catch drift, judge weld size capability with Cpk, and plan macro sections and first-article checks for a robot cell.
- 09Guarding and safety of the cellList a welding robot cell's hazards, choose fences, interlocks, light curtains and screens, see how stopping time sets a safeguard's distance, size fume extraction, and keep people safe inside.
- 10People, skills and the automation planStaff a welding automation project with operators, programmers, engineers and maintainers, train and redeploy welders, rank projects by payback and risk, stage the plan and measure what it delivers.
References and source notes
The manuscript and worked examples are original KEVOS® writing. References inform particular concepts; their authors do not endorse this book. Web references were consulted on 25 October 2026.
- H. A. Hornor (J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia). Spot and Arc Welding (1920). Historical source for its account of early automatic arc welding, quoting Harry D. Morton's description of the self-compensating action of an arc fed by wire at a constant rate, the added controls that widened its range, the importance of electrode angle, the currents and arc voltages used, the shorter arcs a machine could hold, and reported rates of work several times those of manual welding. Summarised and discussed in new words; no text, tables or illustrations are reproduced.
- Douglas T. Hamilton and Erik Oberg (The Industrial Press, New York). Electric Welding (1918). Historical source for semi-automatic and automatic resistance welding machines, including a machine that welded the tangs of garden rakes to their backs at several thousand welds in a working day, foot-operated hoop and rim butt welders, and chain made on automatic machines. Summarised in new words.
- Davis-Bournonville Company, Jersey City. Davis-Bournonville Oxy-Acetylene Welding And Cutting Course of Instruction (1919). Historical source for machine welding of pipe joints with a ring flame, and the view that hand welding was too slow for some repeated seams, which only machines could make economic. Summarised in new words.
- International Organization for Standardization. ISO 10218-1 and ISO 10218-2, Robotics: safety requirements for industrial robots and robot systems and integration (current editions). Named for their scope only. This book quotes no requirements from them; the robot maker's and integrator's documentation and the edition in force govern.
- Safe Work Australia. Model Code of Practice: Managing risks of plant in the workplace; Model Code of Practice: Welding processes (current editions). Named for the duties to guard plant, including robots, and to manage the fume, radiation and electrical risks of welding.
