Discover the superior use of slew drives in welding positioners

In modern welding production, welding positioner as a key equipment, plays a vital role. It can drag the workpiece to be welded, the weld seam to be welded to the ideal position, so as to ensure that the welding operation is carried out smoothly, and significantly improve the welding quality and efficiency. The slew drive, with its unique advantages and features, occupies an important position in the design and application of welding positioners.

Features and benefits of slew drives

The slew drive is a highly integrated, full-peripheral rotary reduction drive mechanism, which uses the slewing bearing as the drive follower and mechanism attachment. Through clever design, in the slewing bearing inside and outside the circle of a circle attached to the main part, the drive source and cover, the other circle is not only as a drive follower, but also as a driven working parts of the connection base. This unique structural design makes full use of the characteristics of the slewing bearing full circumference slewing connectors, realises the efficient configuration of the driving power source and the main drive parts, and makes it a general-purpose deceleration drive mechanism integrating slewing, deceleration and driving functions, and the structure is simple, and the manufacture and maintenance are more convenient.

Slew drives offer significant advantages. Their modular design features are outstanding. Due to the high level of integration, the user does not need to purchase and process each of the accessories that make up the rotary unit separately. This not only reduces the tedious preparation process at the beginning of product production, but also significantly increases labour productivity. In terms of safety, taking the worm gear slew drive as an example, it has the characteristics of reverse self-locking, that is, the worm gear can only be driven by the worm, and the worm gear cannot drive the worm to move. This feature makes the slew drive widely used in lifting, aerial work and other equipment with high safety requirements, which greatly improves the stability and safety factor of the machine. At the same time, compared with the traditional rotary products, slew drives are easy to install, easy to maintain, and can save installation space. In terms of transmission ratio, whether it is gear or worm gear type slew drive, due to the large size difference between the master and slave parts themselves, it is easier to achieve a large transmission ratio, which is difficult to achieve with many other variable speed drive mechanisms.

The application form of slew drive in welding positioner

In a welding positioner, the slew drive is mainly used in the rotary mechanism of the table as well as in the tilting mechanism. In the table rotary mechanism, the slew drive can provide stable and accurate rotary motion for the table. Through the drive of the slew drive, the table can achieve stepless speed regulation to meet the requirements of different welding processes on the welding speed. For example, in some precision welding scenarios where extremely high demands are placed on weld quality and extremely low and stable welding speeds are required, slew drives can easily fulfil this need, ensuring uniform and beautiful weld seam quality and reducing the production of welding defects.

The slew drive also plays a key role in the turning mechanism. It enables the workpiece fixed on the table to achieve precise turning actions and adjusts the surface of the workpiece to be welded to the best welding position. Take the common L-type double rotary welding positioner as an example, its large rotary arm around the horizontal axis can do forward and reverse 360 ° rotation and stop in any position, the small rotary plate around the vertical axis can also do forward and reverse 360 ° rotation and stop in any position. The large rotary arm and small rotary plate are driven by servomotor through worm gear reducer and gears to rotate the slewing bearing, this design can flexibly adjust the angle of the workpiece to adapt to the welding needs of a variety of complex shapes of workpieces. Whether it is welding small or medium-sized hardware parts with weld seams distributed on multiple surfaces, or welding large workpieces, the slew drive can maintain the optimal welding posture and accessibility of the torch at all times through precise flip control.

Slew drive enhances performance of weld positioners

The application of slew drives significantly improves a number of performance indicators of the welding positioner. In terms of accuracy, the slew drive can realise high-precision motion control. In the welding process, precise position control is essential to ensure the quality of the weld seam, the slew drive can ensure that the welding positioner accurately positions the workpiece in the required position, with high repetitive positioning accuracy, effectively reducing the welding deviation, and improve the consistency of the welding quality.

In terms of load carrying capacity, worm gear slew drive has excellent load carrying capacity, deformation resistance and transmission rigidity. This makes the welding positioner able to stably carry workpieces of various weights and sizes to meet the diverse welding needs of different industries. In construction machinery manufacturing, the welding of large structural parts requires the welding positioner to have a strong load-bearing capacity, and the application of slew drives enables the welding positioner to easily meet this challenge.

In terms of efficiency, the fast response and stable operation of the slew drive enable the welding positioner to quickly adjust the position of the workpiece, reducing the auxiliary time and improving the overall welding efficiency. At the same time, its good speed regulation performance can quickly adjust the welding speed according to the requirements of the welding process, which further improves the production efficiency. For large-scale welding manufacturers, improved efficiency means lower production costs and increased market competitiveness.

With its unique advantages and characteristics, the slew drive plays an irreplaceable role in welding positioners. It not only optimises the structural design of the welding positioner, but also significantly improves the performance of the welding positioner, which provides a strong support for the efficient and high-quality development of the welding industry. With the continuous progress of technology, the application of slew drive in the welding positioner will also continue to expand and deepen, bringing more innovation and change for the welding field.