SMART WELDER is a joint industrial research and experimental development project between Goriziane Engineering & Construction S.P.A. and Alping Italia S.R.L..

The tubular steel reticular structures are assembled manually and are typically made up of a main tubular profile and a number of secondary tubular profiles. The secondary tubular profiles are positioned using lifting equipment, then joined to the primary tubular profile using welding.

Alping Italia, known for its expertise in the area of industrial automation,  has developed for Goriziane Engineering & Construction an onshore/offshore automatic positioning system for reticular structures. However, one or more operators have to manually weld the tubular framework before it is erected. This step has become the bottleneck of operations such as pipelaying (oil, gas, etc.) and construction of onshore and offshore platforms for different uses (drilling, masts for wind turbines, etc.).

Thus, the project’s objective is to combine the business idea with an innovative automatic welding technique that is not yet accessible on the global market. The research will look into robots capable of automatically performing the welding bead that fixes the secondary tubular profile to the main tubular profile.