Application of the Xindashida SA10-2000H Industrial Robot in Welding for the Steel Structure Construction Industry
2025-07-25
Application of the Xindashida SA10-2000H Industrial Robot in Welding for the Steel Structure Construction Industry
Project Background
Due to their advantages such as lightweight construction, high strength, and rapid construction speed, steel structure buildings are widely used in fields including industrial plants, high-rise buildings, bridges, and sports venues, and the global market size continues to grow. From 2023 to 2030, the compound annual growth rate is expected to be around 5.2%. The architectural steel structure industry primarily involves the design, fabrication, and installation of steel structures, with welding being one of the key processes involved.
Traditional manual welding is gradually being replaced by semi-automatic and fully automatic welding. In large steel structure fabrication plants, the adoption rate of robotic welding—such as six-axis robotic arms—has exceeded 30%. Advanced welding processes that offer greater efficiency, including narrow-gap welding, multi-layer multi-pass welding, and arc-tracking technology, are being widely implemented to enhance productivity and improve first-pass yield. Moreover, these processes are complemented by welding process monitoring systems that collect real-time data on parameters such as current and voltage, enabling process optimization and facilitating quality traceability.
Customer needs
1. Advanced Welder Shortage: Composite welders who master high-strength steel welding techniques are in short supply. The number of certified International Welding Engineers (IWE) in China is fewer than 10,000, and companies typically require training periods lasting 1 to 2 years.
2. Data Silo Problem: There is poor data interoperability among welding equipment, inspection systems, and ERP software, making it difficult to achieve end-to-end quality traceability.
3, Poor adaptability to complex scenarios: Steel structural components come in a variety of shapes (such as H-beams and box columns), and their welding paths are intricate. Traditional welding robots find it difficult to flexibly handle full-position welding of irregularly shaped components—such as overhead welding and vertical welding.
4. Poor equipment interoperability: There is insufficient digital coordination between welding robots and other processes such as cutting and assembly, which limits the overall efficiency of the production line.
Xinshida Solution
Proposal Description
The SA10-2000H industrial robot from the SA series by Xinshida is selected for teaching-free welding applications in steel structure construction, thereby meeting the demand for automated production.
Scheme advantages
• Compact and agile control cabinet design, with robot support for installation in all positions.
• Hollow wrist design in the robot, with built-in welding gun cable to minimize interference and ensure smooth wire feeding.
• Robot positioning accuracy: ±0.05 mm; end-effector linear velocity: 2.5 m/s
• Supports model import, one-click weld seam extraction, and automatic path planning.
• Supports reverse modeling, enabling easy welding of products in countless mold states.
• Automatic matching of process parameters to meet the welding needs of complex scenarios, reducing welder dependency.
Scheme Composition
The project is equipped with a Xindash SA10-2000H welding robot, an SRC4 robot control cabinet, and a 3D vision non-teaching recognition system.
Associated products
SA10/2000H Welding Robot
Project Results
After testing and operation, the teach-free system has significantly improved the customer’s production efficiency and successfully met their automated welding requirements.
1. Automatic weld seam recognition: Using 3D vision sensors to capture the workpiece contour in real time, the system automatically identifies the positions of weld seams, bevel shapes, and gap dimensions for specially shaped components (such as H-beams and box columns), adapting to complex geometric structures.
2. Dynamic Path Planning: Automatically plans the optimal welding path, addressing welding challenges involving multiple product varieties, small batch sizes, and non-standard parts—issues that conventional teach-and-play robots cannot handle.
3. Significantly reduces teaching time: Traditional robot teaching typically takes 2–4 hours per workpiece, whereas the teach-free technology reduces programming time to just 10–30 minutes, boosting efficiency by more than 80%.
4. Reduced reliance on manual labor: No highly skilled welders are required to operate the robots—ordinary workers can manage multiple units after undergoing simple training, reducing labor costs by 50% to 70%.
5. Supports welding in all positions. By coordinating a six-axis robotic arm with a positioner, it enables full-position welding—including overhead and vertical welding—thus overcoming the challenge of molten pool sagging that typically occurs when traditional robots perform overhead welding.
6. Collaborative operation of multiple robots: For ultra-large components (such as trusses with a span of 40 meters), multiple teach-free robots perform synchronized welding via cloud-based scheduling, shortening the construction period by 30% to 50%.
Case: A steel structure factory adopted a teach-less robot to weld H-shaped steel beams, enabling 24-hour continuous operation. The output per shift increased from 8 beams to 22 beams, and labor costs were reduced by 65%.
