NovPlan™ - Automated Robotic Welding Programming

Simulate individual welds or the full program inside our software, and get an estimate of cycle time. 

If you need to modify the program, just edit the weld using our powerful tools and run the planning process again to have your changes immediately applied, without the need to change or reprogram anything else. 

You can also use our inbuilt accessibiltiy checker to validate your jig design. You can quickly ensure that your jig is accessible to the welding torch and the robot can access the weld in simulation. 

Automatic touch or laser sensing is included to account for differences between the 3D CAD model and the real-world part. Our calibration algorithm can deal with both simple structures and complex features. 

Our software analyse your welds and part geometry and automatically choose the best location for each sense. It will then generate all the motions and code to perform the calibration on your robot. We support touch sensing (using the wire or nozzle), 1D laser sensing, and 2D laser sensing with profile scanners. 

If you'd like exact control, you can also pick exactly where each sense is performed using our inbuilt editor. We also have a number of options to control how seam finding is performed. 

The welding toolpath, approach, retreat and intermediate motions are automatically planned offline and optimised by our software. No robotics expertise, human input or manual path adjustment is required. 

• Enter your optimal weld settings, and NovPlan™ will stay as close as possible to this while avoiding collisions. 
• All motions are collision and singularity free. 
• The robot and any external axes are co-ordinated for optimal weld quality. 
• Supports both simple and complex workcells. 
• Motions are optimised to reduce cycle time. 
• Inbuilt editor allows you exact control to create or edit existing welding toolpaths. 

NovPlan™ Weld supports multi-robot and multi-tool systems. 

• Plan for complex multi-robot systems in a single project with a shared workpiece. 
• Automatically insert tool change commands. 
• The robot and any external axes are co-ordinated for optimal weld quality. 

NovPlan™ makes it easy to edit your welds, whether you want to edit one at a time or hundreds at once. We have a filter and tagging system which makes it easier to manage projects with large numbers of welds. Editing operations include: 

• Re-order welds based on position, distance to next and more. 
• Change weld directions. 
• Split, trim, join and extend welds. 
• Tilt and move the welding path. 
• Copy welds in patterns. 
• Pick touch or laser sense points manually (optional). 
• Create or edit the welding toolpath manually (optional). 

NovPlan™ will automatically calculate how to position your robot to perform each weld. We support all kinds of robot positioners - from tracks all the way through the multi-axis complex gantry systems. 

There's powerful options to let you control exactly where you want your robot positioned to perform each weld. You can let NovPlan™ freely calculate this, or you can lock the robot to one side of the weld, relative to the weld, or to an exact position. You can do this for just one positioner axes, or multiple. You can also keep some axes stationary while allowing others to move during welding. 

Tell us how you want your welds oriented using ISO standard welding positions and NovPlan™ will automatically calculate how to position your workpiece positioner. We support both simple and complex positioning setups - everything from single-axis rotators up to complex multi-axis positioner systems. 

There's also advanced options so you can slightly adjust the workpiece position for the perfect weld, or you can also explicitly tell NovPlan™ how to orient the part. You can synchronise motion during the weld, or keep the workpiece positioner still. 

Once the welds have been planned, click the Generate Program button to create a robot program you can download to your robot controller for verification and execution. 

The program is written using a flexible structure, meaning you can pause, resume and skip through programs as well as customise operations using custom user functions. You can also edit the code on your teach pendant. 

We currently support: 

• ABB RAPID 
• Doosan DRL 
• FANUC TP 
• KUKA KRL 
• Universal Robots URP and URScript 
• Yaskawa Motoman INFORM 

NovPlan™ has a whole host of additional features, which you can contact us to learn more about. Additional features include: 

• Multi-pass weld editor with automatic collision-free-planning. 
• Easily use OEM through-arc seam tracking and weaving. 
• Stitched welds with automatic gap adjustment. 
• Cycle time and welding report generation. 
• Path re-validation when you import a new part.