A bracket shop puts its first welding cobot to work in two days

Custom metal fabrication, steel supports and brackets · Welding · Vendor published

The job

Iron Supports, a small fabricator that grew out of a garage operation, was turning down work because it could not hire or train welders fast enough. The shop bought a packaged cobot welding system and had it welding production parts within two days of delivery, moving its repetitive bracket welds off the manual bench.

The shop

Not published; the vendor describes a small, growing shop with no dedicated robot programmer.

The equipment

Hirebotics Cobot Welder package (a Universal Robots based welding system programmed from a smartphone app); specific arm model and welding power source are not named in the case study.

The published numbers

Payload: not published. Rate: not published; the vendor quotes the president saying rework dropped drastically and any welder on staff can run the machine, vendor claims without figures. Cost: not published. Payback: not published. Deployment: welding production parts within 2 days of delivery, published-by-vendor.

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

This entry is here for its deployment story rather than its numbers: a packaged, app programmed welding cell is the fastest possible on ramp for a shop with zero robotics staff, and two days to production is the credible part of the claim. The absence of any published output, scrap, or payback figure means a buyer should build the business case from their own hours per weldment, not from this account. Ask the vendor which welds in your mix are cobot suitable, since long straight runs on repeat parts transfer well and short tacked assemblies often do not. Confirm the package includes the welding power source you already know how to service, and check fixturing costs, which packaged sellers often leave out of the headline price.

Sources