The following is an excerpt originally published in The Globe and Mail
Novarc Technology’s next generation of robots can take workers out of harm’s way and help to address a looming global shortage of experienced welders
Vancouver-based robot company Novarc Technologies Inc. is creating some heat and light of its own in the pipe-welding industry.
A looming global shortage of experienced welders is a prime driver behind Novarc’s collaborative welding robot, designed to semi-automate the pipe-welding process, company chief executive officer Soroush Karimzadeh says.
“Pipe welders have to go through more than 10 years of work experience and training to do this kind of job. With that comes a cost. But the biggest problem we’re trying to solve is there’s not enough of these welders currently in the marketplace,” Mr. Karimzadeh says.
“The American Welding Society projects there’s going to be a shortage of 400,000 welders by 2025 and that story reverberates everywhere across the globe.”
Novarc robots are not designed to replace workers. They work in pairs – operator and robot – with the operator setting and supervising the robot as it tackles the manual weld part of the job. The machines can be used in sectors including the oil and gas, shipbuilding, chemical and nuclear industries, Mr. Karimzadeh says.
“With technology such as adaptive robots and collaborative robots, junior welders can basically do as much as two to three highly skilled welders an hour,” Mr. Karimzadeh says. “The robot works as a productivity tool to enhance the capabilities of existing welders and operators with very little training. That’s different than traditional robots where you replace workers.”
Traditional autonomous robots, like those used in the automotive industry for years, are designed for “high-volume, low-mix” tasks, repeating the same task over and over with no change. The new generation of co-bots specialize in low-volume, high-mix work, where each task may vary somewhat from the task before it.
Novarc, which has 16 full-time employees, brought its robots to the market in 2016. Mr. Karimzadeh says the firm is finishing its sixth and seventh units.
The cost of a Novarc Spool Welding robot varies, but starts at about US$250,000. The company states that payback on that investment “is usually one to two years and could be as little as six months,” thanks to increased productivity and lower labour cost. The company’s first customer was Canmet Materials in Ontario, a research laboratory within Natural Resources Canada.
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