Today’s Friday and we all know what that means.  Finishing the week’s business, including tidying up the ole email inbox.

I was thus catching up on our Intercim acquisition and came across this video.  Dare I say it’s digitally delightful?

The condensed message: we’re taking a new step in PLM by closing the digital divide between product designers/engineers and product manufactures.  Yep, PLM on the shop floor.

This translates to “as built = as designed”, which can be quite a challenge, espcially in highly regulated industries.

Crank up your volume and enjoy!  Bonus:  manufacturing stats featured at the end.

Have a great weekend!

Kate

Safety first. You hear it quite often because it’s on people’s minds. It’s also important for car manufacturers, and many brag about their vehicles’ safety in television ads. So like many others, when I went shopping for a car recently, safety was at the top of my list. But how do I judge how safe a car is?

I asked my local mechanically-inclined friends. Several criteria actually make a car safe, but I found out that the metal structure of a car is hugely important.

Take spot welds, for example. Sheet metal parts are often bonded together by applying pressure and high electrical currents at specific points called spot welds. This makes the joined parts stronger, safer, and more uniform in appearance.

Spot welds not only make a vehicle safer, but can also help in reducing rattles and road noises. I learned that spot welds are used throughout a vehicle – up to 5,000 spot welds in one car! Who knew?

That sounded pretty safe to me and looking for a vehicle with this amount of spot welding definitely impressed me. Since they are done early in the vehicle production, I had to trust that they were there. I found out that a good spot weld can’t easily been seen in the finished vehicle.

Feeling pretty confident in my new knowledge of spot welds and car safety, I pressed on with my purchasing research.

Okay, so 5,000 spot welds are good, but does it matter how the welds get there? Apparently it does.

Industrial robots are typically used to spot weld sheet metal parts together. The “old way” of programming spot welding robots is by hand on the factory floor, which interrupts automobile production.

The “new way” is to ensure the welding is accurate by programming the robots offline on a personal computer, all without stopping the production line. This reduces manufacturing costs, which keeps car prices down.

All of that means to me: a safer car without the high price. This was definitely worth the research.

Feel like taking a glance at how it works? Watch the video!  It shows our digital spot welding in action.

Well, if you want to know the truth, safety was number two on my list of “must haves” in a car… The color red was first.

What’s at the top of your list?

Best,

Therese

Like many 8-year-old boys, my son spends a lot of his outdoor time riding his bike. He also likes to build things, tear them down, and repaint them. So it really comes as no surprise that his latest hobby is taking old bikes and refurbishing them.

Recently he put his new Schwinn bicycle in the garage and replaced it for what I saw as a rusty three-wheeled green machine bike, fairly new, but severely neglected.  He saw a fast, low-rider that could one day be the coolest bike in the neighborhood. Hmmm . . .was I not looking close enough at his vision? 

My husband took a closer look and pointed out some positives about the hunk of metal before us. Being an expert in the field, so to speak, my husband restores hot-rods and knows the good and bad about machinery. He saw how solid the bike was, with its steel construction and strong perfect welds that join it together.

Grabbing the moment to teach our son new skills, we started talking about bikes and how welds are important to a bike or any steel construction. We talked about how robots are used to make bikes and other complex machines, like heavy machinery, automobiles, and ships.  

My husband explained about welding and how it takes a lot of practice to master it. He started to explain to our son that many metal objects in our lives are welded and that robots are very good for welding. Arc welding things like this by hand could be a very slow and tedious process.

My son didn’t fully understand how a robot could do this (his robot only walks), so we dove into details about what a robot is and how it is programmed to weld. Eureka! He got it.

Speaking the language of computers comes so naturally to kids. Just as quickly as he asked the question, my son turned around to continue working on his bike. He is only 8, after all.

I looked again at the bike and thought about its welds and all the benefits of programming robot arc welds offline, so the real welding robots can keep on with production. I told my husband that robot arc welding can be easily simulated with Dassault Systèmes DELMIA Robotics, validating and optimizing robot programs.

It can be used to position all workcell components (robot, workpiece, etc.) to ensure that the robot can efficiently and optimally reach all the necessary welds. Strong welds. The kind of welds I want holding my son’s bike together when he zips down the street at “record speeds.”

Learn more about arc welding with The Robot Whisperers.  Or if you’d like information about DELMIA’s solution, please click here.

Best,

Therese