Attendees of the product launch of the AMADA FLW (Fiber Laser Welder) in the last decade were quiet, and maybe a little awestruck, at the unveiling of such a product. It was a beast—an efficient and profitable beast to be sure—but a beast. The interior was commodious, not just to fit (often large) parts, but to create a “universe” in which the robot could move unhindered through space to set up welds from all directions. It was a memorable addition to the AMADA product line.
As sometimes happens with a successful platform, the product matured into a product line, with different choices for footprint, laser oscillator, robot model and capacity, and automation. Conversely, some things are the same across all models, like the immediate full functionality within AMADA’s Influent management environment, as well as the robot controller and other items.
You can see in certain situations while using the FLW M1+ that enhancements from other product types (the laser cutters, for example) reach across product lines. The ultra-fast “pops” of spot welding—you’ll see these in our video—come from work done by AMADA in light switching. It’s a flash, faster than traditional welding, and it’s highly accurate both in terms of the length of “on” time as well as matching that length of time to the material being used.
We start our work
The M1+ was set up, live and doing work at AMADA’s Los Angeles Technical Center (Buena Park, CA), also the site of the company’s U.S. headquarters. We had two jobs to do, and the first was a reinforced panel. Made of 16 gauge stainless steel, it required four seam welds, one at each corner, and multiple spot welds to make sure that the center brace would stay in place.
Note that you can also weld reflective metals such as brass and copper thanks to the ENSIS technology inside the laser welding unit. This is the same technology that has evolved over the years in the AMADA laser cutting family, and is core to the capabilities of the FLW. A key part of ENSIS is the Variable Beam Control Unit. It automatically adjusts the beam’s properties to process a range of material thicknesses. AMADA points out that the ENSIS units use fewer components than any other system available today. Our M1+ was equipped with a 3kW fiber laser.
Our guide to the machine and to the work was Jose Garcia, who is the Application Engineer for FLW products. For this first video, we were inside the operating environment of the robot welder. It is much more compact than the original product; it is a 12 ft. by 12 ft. area on the floor, with a ceiling of 11.5 ft. high. While that seems gargantuan, by the time you account for the robot’s available work space, the work table, and an operator (who is not present during the welding!), it is well fit to the task.
Toward the end of this short video, Garcia will also demonstrate how the system helps you easily set the working distance from the part. It’s interesting and simple. Let’s see what’s happening before we do the job:
The camera that shows live position information has another important job: tracking the weld path. Any motion that would lead to variance is automatically corrected. Another interesting feature in the weld head is its rotating lens within the path of the laser beam. Without moving the entire head, this rotation creates a beam weaving effect, creating smooth results. Depending on the configuration, you can use it to bridge large or uneven gap sizes, or control the heat delivered to the workpiece, with precisely defined edges to the weld too.
Now, we get a brief look at our panel, and then it’s time to clear out of the enclosure. It is extremely safe to those on the outside. You can keep track of the progress outside through a safety window. Not even a stray photon can creep out of the work table area; it shuts light-tight.
This is a fast-moving series of welds:
Pretty quick work, well under two minutes.
This next weld takes only a few seconds. It is a butt weld and is based on a coupon fixture that Garcia uses to test custom conditions or demonstrate the smoothness and the relative coolness of the weld. It is truly amazing that he picks up the piece bare-handed (do not try this at home) so soon after the weld, but that is the kind of temperature control offered by this system. It also leads to little or no distortion due to high temperatures.
The smooth results come in part from AMADA’s continuous waveform technology. By its nature, pulse welding cannot give the same results. The continuous waveform technology also is faster than pulse and when you see the next video you will understand the difference in smoothness (and what its potential is to avoid or minimize post-processing).
One of AMADA’s goals in developing this product was to make it easy to use, and it really is a quick setup. Pay attention to how Garcia gets to the line of the weld path. You are aligning a camera readout with the ideal y-axis line, entering no numbers or tables, just using the monitor in a feedback-based alignment process. It’s really easy to do. Let’s watch this weld:
Doing the programming
There are two ways to do programming: interactively and in self-generating mode with the pendant inside the enclosure, or by programming it at a terminal straight into software.
Having both methods available is a real advantage. For simpler jobs, using the pendant gives you the ability to interactively, and with great freedom, program the movements and actions of the robot and the laser. What you are not doing is trying to move the stout robot by hand (which is the case with the small cobot welding systems). Additionally, you begin to see there is a point of diminishing returns if you have, say, 20 welds on a complicated enclosure, and you’re spending time on operations like “start point, laser on, move laser head, stop point, laser off, move to new start point” 20 times. It would be easier to simply program those operations in software. The good news is that there are many conditions and even macros available to the operator in the software, giving them tested shortcuts and new capabilities.
Let’s see how Garcia handles the pendant programming:
In this next video Garcia shows us the scheduler capability (this runs jobs at the expected time if the job is saved and/or programmed in software), the Teaching Assist System (TAS, which is what compensates for any robot deviation from the weld path as mentioned above), and a brief look at the number of preset routines available within the software so, as Garcia puts it, the operator is not working “from scratch.”
This is a good moment to point out that the FLW M1+ comes with the AMNC 4ie controller, the latest such device from AMADA. One of the nice things is that if you know the interface and the hardware from one machine, it makes a transition (or addition) so much easier because an operator starts with some familiarity. The control features a touch-screen interface. It also has some management capabilities like automatic email notifications of jobs in progress and upcoming maintenance.
Let’s look and listen:
We preview our last video with this question: When is a program not a program? When it’s a macro. I’ll leave the surprising details up to Jose Garcia, but just know that the program side of the FLW ENSIS e M1+ is loaded with lots of functionality and subroutines that make it really easy to use and avoids reinventing processes.
Let’s listen as Garcia tells us how this works:
Two versions of the FLW M1+ are available, one has the Yaskawa GP25 (25 kg load) robot, while the other is a GP50 (50 kg load) robot. The same controller, the YRC1000, is used no matter which robot is installed.
It’s clear that the M1+ gives many options to the operator, and that engineers have used advances from other machine platforms to improve the performance of the M1+. AMADA works with the buyer for matters such as integration into the shop, as well as any training needs.