WeldComputer was founded in 1987 with one goal – to help resistance welding manufacturers achieve optimal welding performance. For over 30 years, they’ve seen manufacturers accept defects and financial loss, chalking up poor welding quality as “the cost of doing business”. Wich is it’s unacceptable. WeldComputer’s mission is to help customers turn welding quality and scale into their competitive advantage.
WeldComputer engineers, manufactures, sells, and supports a broad range of high-performance, proven welding solutions that help customers control the welding process, produce consistent and high-quality welds, keep undetected bad welds from passing through production and even prevent them from occurring in the first place.
The company’s products meet the most stringent standards of quality and performance. These solutions are highly regarded as the “gold-standard” leaders in the market with hundreds of successful customers – including Boeing, GE Aviation, NASA, U.S. Airforce, and many more – all of which have seen rapid payback and improved margins as a result. Over the decades, WeldComputer has expanded beyond aerospace, defense, and military applications into verticals including medical, electronics, automotive, appliance, industrial, and general manufacturing.
Additionally, their team of resistance welding experts provides advisory, consulting, and managed services to improve welding operations, identify opportunities to optimize our customer’s machine performance, and help them understand the exact machine and control system specifications required for their operation.
WeldComputer operates on a global scale. They also partner with carefully selected manufacturers, distributors, systems integrators, and industry-specific experts who install and support our products globally.
Interview with Robert Cohen, Chief Executive Officer at WeldComputer Corporation.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Robert Cohen: We operate with three core competencies:
Products. We supply high-tech controls and monitors that can be added to any new or existing resistance welding machine regardless of the process – spot, seam, projection, flash/butt.
Advisory and Consulting services. We provide the expertise to answer any resistance welding questions or issues.
Managed Services. Our experts can extend and guide customer internal teams, helping to optimize their WeldComputer investments.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
R.C: We recently launched an industry-first Managed Service – Managed Machine Performance – to give manufacturers using our controls an economical way to ensure they’re getting the most out of their WeldComputer investments. Our team of experts provides proactive, operational assistance such as ongoing quality monitoring, proactive alerting, and prescriptive guidance designed to optimize production operations. We’re seeing a lot of demand in this area, especially for those looking to maintain business continuity in the event a previously trained engineer leaves. We’re really excited about the reception so far.
Robert Cohen, Chief Executive Officer at WeldComputer Corporation.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
R.C: WeldComputer solutions, services, and expertise can assist manufacturers with any resistance welding problem:
- Welding Controls;
- Adaptive Welding Technology;
- Welding Monitors;
- Remote Access Software for Welding;
- Professional Services (Advisory, Consulting);
- Managed Services (Machine Performance).
Additionally, our experts are often consulted by our global network of OEM partners and machine manufacturers to help define the correct specifications for a customer’s optimal machine configuration and to validate the performance of the machine upon completion.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
R.C: While resistance welding has been around for over 100 years, the technology in this market is fairly immature. We find that buyers are not aware of what technology is available to them today. You wouldn’t believe how many manufacturers we talk to believe their welding machine is “too old” to produce quality welds. Interestingly enough, we’ve helped customers retrofit a WeldComputer Control on their existing, decades-old machine and outperform new welding machines (and gain significant savings). We have countless customers who’ve faced this issue and didn’t realize that they can achieve better performance simply by switching their control.
Additionally, many customers don’t fully understand the value of monitoring every weld. We had one customer who believed that periodic destructive testing was the most effective way of validating weld quality. Using our WeldView® monitor, we were able to prove there was a 95% chance a welding engineer would miss a poor production weld by relying on destructive testing. As the industry evolves, we expect to see more manufacturing operations adopt monitoring solutions as the new standard for their quality assurance programs after realizing the current way only proves the quality of welds that were destroyed.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
R.C: Over the past five years, we’ve seen a major shift in customer requirements for their control purchases which now specify adaptive and monitoring technologies. This significant shift is mainly driven by leadership driving focus on achieving higher quality at lower costs, and finding ways to increase production throughput. Historically these choices were considered mutually exclusive but are now accessible to every manufacturer with WeldComputer’s Adaptive Control.
Additionally, customers are increasingly looking to collect monitoring data to prove the integrity of each weld produced. As more manufacturers are shifting operational models to require fewer welding engineers as a result of dealing with high turnover and cost-cutting measures, they are upgrading their technology and leveraging managed services to lower the cost of their welding operation and limit the impact of engineering turnover.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
R.C: While all of our solutions push the envelope on resistance welding innovation, there are two considered industry-firsts:
Adaptive Control: Adaptive technology enables customers to weld with unparalleled precision and quality. The WeldComputer® Adaptive Control is the only inverter resistance weld control that can directly connect to any type of resistance welding machine, regardless of the type of transformer. The difference between our Adaptive Control and the rest of the market is our patented technology, proprietary algorithms, and ability to make hundreds of multi-variable decisions every millisecond. Unlike other “adaptive” systems that address single root-cause variations with cookie-cutter actions, WeldComputer’s Adaptive Control automatically compensates for multiple variations at once. In fact, customers are able to take advantage of clauses in the AWS D17.2 specification for aerospace and MIL-SPEC welding to save money by cutting antiquated destructive testing methods.
Managed Machine Performance: Operators struggle to use welding technology effectively, hire and retain talent, manage downtime, and meet the needs of the business. With Managed Machine Performance, our experts can help customers quickly maximize their WeldComputer investments. Our experts use their experience and customer production data (either through remote access or data reports) to uncover proactive operational actions that ensure efficient production, even from thousands of miles away. We provide concise reporting and monthly assessments designed to improve productivity while saving time and money. Sample use cases could recommend when to clean the contacts on a specific machine’s secondary circuit to avoid damage and unnecessary downtime, or recommend scheduled ram maintenance due to evidence of excessive friction that could lead to equipment failure.
E.E: What estimations do you have for the rest of 2022?
R.C: As we close out 2022, we see the demand for adaptive technology and managed services continue to grow, especially in the international regions we support. We’re also seeing the current economic climate encourage a larger emphasis on free cash flow, leading manufacturers to delay new machinery purchases and instead choose to upgrade their current equipment with our technology in order to gain similar performance improvements at a fraction of the cost. There is a lot of demand for our Managed Service to bridge their expertise gap, as well.