Comau and Seabery have joined forces to create an educational training program for students and workers that allows them to practice the skills needed to become proficient and certified robotic welders. The program is designed to help fulfill the global demand for expert welding professionals.
Industry 4.0 automation is increasing the level of skills required by welding professionals, yet robotic welding training is seldom offered at traditional welding training institutions or vocational training centers. Furthermore, a standardized robotic welding training curriculum does not currently exist. Traditional welding training and practice is also costly, time consuming and requires dedicated safety equipment.
To meet these challenges, Comau and Seabery now offer a training method created with the Soldamatic welding simulator and the e.DO educational robot whose programmable settings respond to nearly any professional and educational requirement.
The new solution allows unlimited practice via a simulated training program that uses augmented reality to reproduce a real-life robotic welding environment. It includes a programmable teach pendant and features hundreds of welding procedures and positions to comprehensively train robot operators. The Soldamatic simulator exclusively offers Hyperreal-SIMTM, a proprietary technology owned by Seabery, which is a multi-sensory training interface, including sight, sound and touch with a highly-calibrated and parameterized system.
Available immediately as a stand-alone training program or as part of Comau’s e.DO offering, the new solution is designed for any educational institution with a flexible curriculum and a cloud-based interface. It is well-suited for on-the-job upskilling as it can be programmed for nearly every welding procedure specification (WPS), allows the use of advanced welding joints and creates robotic welding simulations for nearly any position. As such, the Soldamatic and e.DO solution promises to be a milestone in proliferating robotics welding training, an accelerant to Industry 4.0 and a progressive step to fulfill the global gap in skilled manual labor.
“The collaboration with Seabery anticipates future training needs and reflects Comau’s ongoing commitment to developing innovative, hands-on training opportunities,” explained Ezio Fregnan, Comau Academy & Education Business Director. “Thanks to the powerful combination of augmented reality and the e.DO educational robot, we are helping fill an important skills gap while empowering students with the know-how needed to pursue a career in robotics welding.”
“Soldamatic welding training simulation was invented to address the critical global shortage of welders and appeal to a new generation of welding students. With Soldamatic simulators in welding labs in more than 80 countries, robotic welding training has emerged as a clear and logical progression in our patented welding skills training. Our partnership with Comau e.DO is an opportunity to amplify our robotic welding training solution by partnering with the leader in industrial automation who is also equally passionate about promoting modern, interactive and effective educational tools for younger generations”, affirmed Ignacio Zalvide, Product Management Director, Seabery.
How do you plan to ensure the quality and consistency of the training provided through the Soldamatic and e.DO solution? Given that a standardized robotic welding training curriculum does not currently exist, what steps will you take to ensure that the training meets industry standards and prepares the trainees for real-life welding scenarios?
Once again, congratulations on this milestone achievement, and I look forward to hearing more about the impact of your educational training program on the welding industry.