Development trend of automatic welding robot at home and abroad

Automatic welding robot has the characteristics of stable welding quality, improving workers' working conditions and improving labor productivity. It is widely used in automobile, engineering machinery, general machinery, metal structure, weapon industry and other industries. According to incomplete statistics, about half of the industrial robots in service all over the world are used in various forms of welding processing. By 2005, there were about 914000 sets of industrial robots in service in the world, of which the total number of industrial robots equipped in Japan reached more than 500000, becoming the "Kingdom of robots", followed by the United States and Germany; In Asia, the number of industrial robots per 10000 employees in the manufacturing industry in Japan, South Korea and Singapore ranks among the top three in the world. In recent years, the number of robots in the world has increased rapidly, reaching 121000 in 2005 alone. China began to research industrial robots in the late 1970s. After more than 20 years of development, China has made great progress in technology and application, which has played an important role in promoting the development of the national economy, especially the manufacturing industry. According to incomplete statistics, China's industrial robots have shown a rapid growth momentum in recent years, with an average annual growth rate of more than 40%, and the growth rate of welding robots has exceeded 60%; In 2004, the number of domestic industrial robots exceeded 1400, and the number of imported robots exceeded 9000, most of which are used in the field of welding; In 2005, the number of new robots in China exceeded 5000, but it accounted for only 6% of the new number in Asia, far less than 15% in South Korea and far less than 69% in Japan. This growth rate is obviously mismatched with China's economic development speed and economic aggregate, which shows that the degree of automation of China's manufacturing industry needs to be further improved. On the other hand, it also reflects the low labor cost of China, and the improvement of manufacturing automation level and the application of industrial robots is limited.
At present, the application of automatic welding robot has ushered in a rare development opportunity. On the one hand, with the development of technology, the price of welding robots continues to decline and the performance continues to improve; On the other hand, with the rising labor cost and the development of China's economy from a large manufacturing country to a powerful manufacturing country, it is necessary to improve processing means, improve product quality and increase enterprise competitiveness. All these indicate that there is a huge space for robot application and development.