A Brief Analysis of the Development Trend of China's Construction Machinery Welding Industry

It is well known that the application of advanced technology and the corresponding equipment can significantly enhance product quality and production efficiency. Similarly, adopting advanced and efficient processes can reduce the cost of products.

All over the world and domestic production plants dominated by the welding industry (such as those in the boiler, bridge, heavy and construction machinery industries) have been actively adopting international advanced welding techniques and equipment. By using these advanced techniques and equipment, the welding quality has been enhanced, the welding cost has been reduced, and the working conditions of workers have been improved. At present, due to the fierce market competition, it is of great significance to enhance productivity, rationalize processes and reduce costs.

In most developed countries around the world, based on their own characteristics, flexible welding systems (FWS) and high-level fully automatic welding systems are widely used in welding workshops. Despite the shortage of labor and high employee expenses of enterprises, the welding quality and production efficiency have remained at the world's leading position, demonstrating good economic benefits.

However, in our country, due to the abundant labor force, relatively low personnel quality, and some objective reasons, it is not advisable to follow the practices of developed countries. Instead, we should, based on our own characteristics, take our own path in low-cost welding.

Low-cost welding, which is significantly different from traditional manual arc welding and advanced welding robots and flexible welding systems (FWS), adopts high-quality, efficient and energy-saving welding technologies. Moreover, the investment in welding equipment is not large, the utilization rate is high, and the payback period is short. During the welding process, the automatic feeding of welding wire or the installation of automatic walking and other mechanisms bring obvious economic benefits in terms of welding quality, production efficiency, reduction of welding material consumption, and energy conservation. Typical methods include CO2 gas shielded welding and submerged arc welding, etc.

The usage of welding robots in our country

There are approximately 70 factories in China that use welding robots for production. The total number of welding robots has reached 500 (including those used in colleges and universities, training and scientific research).

(2) The number of welding robots in the construction machinery industry accounts for 16% of the total, ranking third after the automotive manufacturing industry at 47% and the automotive parts manufacturing industry at 18%.

(3) The arc welding robots owned by the construction machinery industry account for 30%, while only 37% are funded by the automobile manufacturing industry.

(4) Although the number of arc welding robots in the construction machinery industry is not as large as that in the automotive industry, the level of robots in this industry is higher than that in other major industries. For instance, in the construction machinery industry, almost all arc welding robots are equipped with contact positioning and arc tracking systems, and have the function of coordinated movement between the robot and the position change. Moreover, only five of the most advanced flexible welding production lines (FWS) in the country are all installed in construction machinery manufacturing plants.

The current situation of welding technology in the construction machinery industry

In the welding process of structural components for construction machinery, the automatic (semi-automatic)CO2 gas shielded welding process accounts for approximately 70%(by weight), while the welding workload completed by arc welding robots is less than 50%, with the rest being manual arc welding. This is generally reflected by the representatives.

At present, the technological level cannot meet the requirements of arc welding robots. Although the construction machinery industry has a relatively high level and a large number of robots, the quality of parts before welding is relatively low. Arc welding robots fail to meet production requirements, resulting in a large number of expensive devices being in an unfavorable semi-idle state.

In the early 1970s, some factories in the construction machinery industry began to try the semi-automatic CO2 welding process. With the continuous improvement of the quality of CO2 welding machines, especially after several joint ventures launched high-quality CO2 welding machines, it has driven the general improvement of the quality of domestic welding wires and welding machine parts and accessories, effectively promoting the development of CO2 welding machine technology.

The construction machinery industry should vigorously promote low-cost automatic welding

Today, although the highly efficient and energy-saving CO2 gas shielded welding process is still not very automated in the welding processes of the construction machinery industry, construction machinery manufacturers should, while actively promoting the CO2 welding technology, continuously improve the process through technological transformation.

The author believes that it has been developed in the following aspects:

(1) Adopt energy-saving, high-quality and efficient welding processes and equipment, such as automatic (semi-automatic) inverter CO2 gas shielded welding machines and submerged arc automatic welding.

(2) Develop automated welding. On the basis of semi-automatic welding with CO2 gas protection, expand the application scope of automatic welding for regular weld seams (such as straight lines and circles). It is hoped that there will be breakthroughs in the application of automatic welding to the welding of irregular curved parts, valuable experience and good progress can be gained, the application scope of automatic welding can be expanded, and the proportion of automatic welding can be increased.

(3) Improve process equipment through multiple channels, such as assembly fixtures and welding positioners, etc. Improve welding quality and work efficiency, reduce the labor intensity of welders, and achieve civilized production.

In conclusion, low-cost automatic welding makes the production process more rational. Welding accounts for a considerable proportion of the production cost in the entire industry. Advanced low-cost automatic welding processes can further enhance welding quality, reduce welding costs, and improve working conditions for workers. These have been fully confirmed in our production practice.