October 18, 2013 - Robotiq releases Kinetiq Teaching to quickly and easily task welding robots without requiring in-depth programming knowledge. Kinetiq Teaching enables job shops to easily implement robotic welding with simplified teaching and reduced set-up times by allowing operators to guide the robot by hand to desired weld positions. An icon-based menu is presented on the teach pendant’s color touch screen to allow the operator to define the task. Programming time is greatly reduced with the more intuitive manual positioning. The Graphic User Interface allows robot programming to be performed with minimal training.
With Kinetiq Teaching, the welder moves the robotic welding tip next to a workpiece by physically hand-guiding the robot. Once the welding point is reached, the welder determines the welding parameters through a touch screen interface.
After all the points are recorded, the welder can playback the programmed trajectory and modify it on-the-fly. By doing so, experienced welders will be able to set welding jobs and oversee the productivity of more than one robotic welder at a time, or train less skilled operators to program the welding robot and act as a technical adviser and a quality assurance resource.