ABB Cobot Welding: From Job Shops to Home Garages

How robot welding moved from car body lines to small job shops with ABB's GoFa Cobot Arc Welding Package, and why a home garage could be next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/22/20261 min read

For most of the last century, a weld was only as good as the person holding the torch. Welders learned by feel, reading the puddle through a dark lens and setting travel speed by hand, and a bad bead meant an hour with the grinder.

Woman arc welder in a mask and apron welding at a factory bench
Woman arc welder in a mask and apron welding at a factory bench

An arc welder at Wagner Electric Company, 1940s. Photo: Oscar C. Kuehn, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Car makers handed the torch to machines first. From the 1960s, big articulated arms took over spot and arc welding on body lines, and a modern body shop runs hundreds of them. Those cells were expensive and needed specialists to program, so small fabrication shops kept welding by hand.

Rows of industrial robots welding a car body shell on an automotive line
Rows of industrial robots welding a car body shell on an automotive line

Welding robots in the BMW Leipzig body shop. Photo: BMW Werk Leipzig, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Small shops are now buying robots too. At IMTS in Chicago this month, welding cobots light enough for one person to carry were on the show floor, pitched at job shops that can't hire enough welders. ABB's option is its Cobot Arc Welding Package, built around the GoFa CRB 15000 cobot and the OmniCore controller.

Operator hand-guiding an ABB GoFa cobot welding torch over a fixture table
Operator hand-guiding an ABB GoFa cobot welding torch over a fixture table

ABB GoFa with the Cobot Arc Welding Package. Photo: ABB

The package puts an Easy Teach Device on the torch. The operator grabs the arm, guides the tip along the seam and presses a button to save each point. ABB says a weld sequence can be set up in under 30 seconds without a teach pendant. Joint torque sensors let GoFa stop on contact, so it can share a bench with people.

Gloved hands holding the ABB Easy Teach Device on a GoFa cobot torch
Gloved hands holding the ABB Easy Teach Device on a GoFa cobot torch

The Easy Teach Device mounted on a GoFa welding torch. Photo: ABB

SWIFTI, ABB's faster cobot, suits jobs where cycle time matters more, and RobotStudio lets engineers plan weld paths offline. Heavier production welding still goes to industrial arms such as the IRB 1520ID, which runs its hoses and cables inside the arm so they don't snag on the part.

Welding torch guided to a pipe-to-plate joint on a fixture table
Welding torch guided to a pipe-to-plate joint on a fixture table

Teaching a GoFa weld path around a pipe joint. Photo: ABB

The garage could be next. Hobby welders, farm workshops and car restorers already own MIG sets, and a lighter, cheaper cobot with camera seam tracking could make a robot helper at home realistic within a decade. The welder would still need to know what a good weld looks like, because someone has to show the robot where it goes.

Mechanic MIG welding the chassis of an old Land Rover outdoors
Mechanic MIG welding the chassis of an old Land Rover outdoors

MIG welding a Land Rover chassis. Photo: Collard, via Wikimedia Commons

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