Knowledge Centre

Plenty of workshops keep cold milk in the fridge for the welders. It feels like looking after your team. It isn’t. In over 40 years in engineering I’ve lost count of the sheds with a fridge full of milk “for the boilermakers.” The belief is that a glass of milk before or after welding coats…

Kemppi’s official cobot welding demo, shown here on an ABB GoFa collaborative robot. MexxBot uses ABB collaborative robots with a Kemppi welder — the same human-and-cobot workflow. A welding cobot doesn’t replace your boilermaker. It hands them an offsider. Whenever we show a welding cobot, someone asks the obvious question: “So this puts welders out…

“No safety fencing” sounds like a shortcut. It isn’t. It’s how collaborative robots are designed to work. When people hear a welding robot runs without a fenced cage, the first reaction is usually concern. It sounds like a corner being cut. In practice, it’s the opposite — it’s the result of safety being engineered into…

Most automation and robotics projects do not fail during installation.They fail much earlier during procurement phase. If equipment is ordered before system architecture, integration constraints, and operating scenarios are fully defined integration risks appear later in the project when they are most expensive to resolve. Common issues include: • Throughput assumptions that do not match…

Some companies hesitate to adopt industrial robotics because they assume robots are difficult to operate or unsafe to work around. In practice, modern industrial robots are designed with multiple layers of safety and operator control.For example, robots can be manually controlled using a teach pendant with a “Deadman switch”. This allows operators to safely jog…

Automation systems are traditionally tested for the first time during physical commissioning. At that stage equipment has already been purchased, installed, and integrated. Any design errors discovered during commissioning can cause delays, redesign work, and operational disruption.Digital twin technology allows the system to be tested long before equipment is installed. A working virtual model of…

Early engineering definition is the lowest-cost risk control available in automation and robotics capital projects. This overview explains how structured front-end engineering prevents scope creep, integration risk, and late design changes. The Strategic Engineering & Feasibility Session is a structured 90 minute advisory engagement designed to stabilise project definition before Feasibility begins. The overview below…