EVST Editorial Team ，author EVST

Prefabrication Automation: Cost the Handover

In prefabrication automation, rolling, forming and welding each automate well on their own. What governs output is the handover between them.

Robotic head cutting puts a closed path on a curved surface. Plan the path and the torch attitude together, then judge the cut edge.

Choosing a SCARA robot or a six-axis arm for small part assembly starts with the motion of each step, not with the axis count in a catalogue.

Robot payload has to cover the tooling and the part together, at the real distance between the wrist flange and the centre of mass.

Weld acceptance fails when appearance and penetration are written as one clause. Separate the line-side check from the procedure test.

Cobot reach is not one straight-line distance. Every working point, tool length, posture margin and people clearance belong in the same check.

When a part is too large to lift, mobile welding moves the equipment instead. Parking position and datum recovery become the planning unit.

In machine tending with one robot and several machines, reach, waiting and fenced access decide the case long before arm speed does.

In thin-sheet welding, distortion causes more rework than weld defects. Clamp positions and weld sequence decide the final shape.

In multi-pass welding the groove sets the cross-section and the cross-section sets the pass count. Plan layers before parameters.

A robotic welding cell is six parts working to one cycle time. Robot and torch, fixture and clamps, power source, gas, loading and flow.

Separate assembly gap from process parameters on a thin-sheet welding line by starting at the blank and the forming step.