Data-driven welding improvement

On one hand, knowledge is power. Data, on the other hand, is often simply a lot of numbers no one is quite sure how to manage. The wealth of data that is available from modern fabricating and welding systems can feel this way; it’s all very well to have this information available, but it’s another thing to fully understand how it can benefit a shop floor. However, both large and small companies are starting to harness the value of the data their welding machines generate. With the right strategy, that data can become the knowledge you need to improve your productivity.

Critical KPIs

Most new welding power sources now can be configured to share the critical information from each weld it makes.

“Every Power Wave® welder can be configured to send information to our cloud welding data collection system, which is called CheckPoint™,” said Michael Relko, a product manager at Lincoln Electric. “That system houses welding summary data on every weld that is made on a power source once it is connected. It provides data such as average amperage, wire feed speed, and energy input for each weld that is made. It is possible to map out your whole plant in this system to see how each station is doing. You can even go down to the part level to see average deposition rates on a specific part or weld.”

Relko said that a lot of customers are using this information to track wire usage and deposition rates between parts and between operators.

“You can have it set up to have a welder assigned to a specific station so that you can observe how they are doing, determining if their welds are in spec, or see how perhaps the operator’s deposition rate changes over time,” said Relko. “It gives managers visibility as to what is actually happening on the shop floor and gives them clues as to what questions to ask about how operations are going on the shop floor. A lot of managers don’t really appreciate what is going on out on the shop floor until they are able to see the data coming directly from a workstation.”

Mike Pantaleano, vice president of data-drive advantage/digital solutions for ESAB, concurs with this last point.

“It’s really interesting [that] there are a lot of shop managers who are honest enough to say, ‘I often don’t have a clue when my folks are welding,’” he said. “A lot of them have projections of arc-on time that are way higher percentage points than they should be. So something as simple as arc time for a given power source or an aggregate area of your operations can be eye-opening.”

Both Pantaleano and Relko suggest starting to chart your data by looking at one or two main variables.

“I would recommend a shop just hook up one or two power sources to see what data you see,” said Relko. “This will give you an idea of what you can get out of the machine, but also what you are unlikely to use. For instance, some managers are interested in arc time, others are focused on deposition rates. By looking at what information is flowing to the system, you can get an idea of what is most critical to you.”

Here we see some basic data on welds displayed by Lincoln Electric's CheckPoint system. The system can be configured to display information like projected deposition and projected arc-on time based on the machines connected to the system.

“If you had to draw a cocktail napkin sketch of the most important key performance indicators you want to be able to manage, what are those?” said Pantaleano. “Once you know what those are, you can work backwards and ensure you gather the data for that. In the case of welding, arc-on time is one of the keys. A lot of customers are interested in the amount of wire and gas being consumed, and the number of parts they are finishing per area, per shift; those are really good key indicators of the health of their welding area. I think what that leads to are the productivity numbers – how much am I welding, how does this shift compare to another shift, how many parts am I making, how fast do I do a particular part compared to another part – so I can quote the project better based on actual data. We see those as big buckets of functionality. The nice thing is that if our technology is doing its job right, shop managers don’t have to worry about the sheer volume of information but can focus only on their biggest pain points.”

Seeing It Simplified

These systems also allow you to use graphical interfaces to interpret data.

“We have some dashboards that can calculate and display OEEs on a kind of dial gauge,” said Relko. “We can also have it display things like projected deposition, projected arc-on time based on the machines connected to the system. We’ve seen customers put these on large displays on the shop floor so that operators can see how they are doing based on these projections.”

If someone wants to review an individual weld, some systems can give you visual feedback directly after a weld.

“Our user interface can break it down for the operator immediately if they have a screen next to them,” said Pantaleano. “It will show what the currents were, the amps, the wire feed speed, travel time, and total heat input. The combination of all that might lead the system to say, ‘We think you have burn-through’ or some other problem. There are other sensors required if you want to have that kind of detail, but it is possible to do.”

Precision Possibilities

The precision of the data available to welders is getting more granular all the time, as the previous example suggests. And the technology is evolving to meet the needs of a variety of very specialized manufacturers.

“One of the most interesting applications and the newest for us is generating real-time weld quality information,” said Pantaleano. “We can now gather data at a very high sampling rate, and with the use of algorithms we can tell an operator almost immediately, ‘We think you have porosity at this particular location.’ We can even mark the location to say, ‘Not only do we think you have porosity on this weld, but it is in this particular area of the weld.’”

Pantaleano said that this type of granular information can be critical for wind farm manufacturers and pipe mills doing multiple passes on the same groove of a part. ESAB’s purchase of measurement and monitoring company HSK in 2017 has helped it ramp up the granularity of information it can achieve for this type of manufacturer. “That’s a concept that is really intriguing to some of our bigger customers.”

Here we see an example of a dashboard created to allow a supervisor or manager to assess the health of their welding systems at a glance on ESAB’s WeldCloud™ system.

He also noted that data collection is becoming important for documentation purposes at a lot of companies.

“Some companies need to be able to state that the correct welder was working on a particular part, that the correct filler metal was used, and that they welded within a certain specification according to the WPS,” said Pantaleano. “Some companies used to spend a lot of time gathering that information manually on spreadsheets.”

Your shop may not require such granular information, but there is no doubt some level of data can provide you with the knowledge you need to push your productivity. It’s a matter of determining what that level is.

Editor Robert Colman can be reached at rcolman@canadianfabweld.com.

ESAB North America, www.esab.ca

Lincoln Electric Canada, www.lincolnelectric.com