We recently bought an ArcDroid with the intention of using a MIG welder instead of a plasma cutter. We are currently still running trials of this, and it is looking promising. I was wondering has anyone else done this? If so, have you got any tips?
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I assume that if you are going to take the time to program the ArcDroid to weld you plan on doing some kind of commercial production of a product? The ArcDroid isn’t really designed for that and I think you will be disappointed as it’s not a commercial duty product- it’s for hobby and/or light manufacturing
I think that is a fantastic idea!!! I want to CNC plasma cut a boat frame from smaller pieces and then weld them together as if they came from a large sheet and it NEVER occurred to me to try this! Please do share your results and terrific out of the box thinking!
Ken
I haven’t done it, but was thinking about it. I think it would be very limited unless you could have a tilt function on the torch holder in both X and Y directions, say for filet welds in different directions. I wish you every success with it and will be following your progress.
So far we have used our general weld wire and it welds perfectly, with nice smooth movements perfect for what we wanna do. From the look of it, if you need to weld 2 pieces together that can be done top-down this will do a perfect weld.
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This is from some of the preliminary tests. Being able to have a constant feed made these welds pure with no gaps when ground down. There wasn’t much difference between arc and weld in regard to how to use them. The probing feature was a huge help in making sure the mig welder was always the same height above the material. The only worry was the heat from the welder, but we just used a wet rag to cool down between jobs.
Unfortunately, I can’t show the final product as what we are making is, in my boss’s words, a trade secret. But what I can say is that using this robot/cnc has drastically taken the time and cost out of the job. Changing direction also works perfectly.
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Very Nice!
Thanks for Sharing
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Are you still using this? I’m thinking about buying one and setting it up to do Hardfacing patterns with MiG wire
We still use it when the job requires it. we have run into multiple problems since welding and cutting are 2 very different operations. For instance, we did have to get a second one since the current from the welder transferred into the machine electronics, however, thankfully our DIY electrition was able to fix it. Heat has also been a huge problem, if there isn’t enough cooling of some sort that machine will turn off/stop moving. We’ve had the machine read the wrong NC code randomly and either go the wrong way or continue an arc(circle) that ruins the job. Also, spatter is a huge pain if doing long runs since you can’t stop the machine halfway through to clean the nozzle.
Also if you are thinking of using it for hardface welding, be aware that lots of hardfacing wire cracks after welding (to release its strain/stress) which we found can create “holes” in the weld which result in weak spots. We also have used Hardfacing MiG wire for a job. But it works best with Generic wire.
So all in all, it does the job but isnt a plug-in-and-go situation since it wasn’t designed for this purpose.
Great idea!!
I am confident that you will get this working in the end, but I would like to suggest maybe angle your mig torch a little more to get a flatter weld, it may also help with the spatter from building up so quickly, only suggestions so please don’t shoot me down
