The Beginner's Guide to Welding Positioners and How They Work

Welding is a process that uses electricity to generate extreme and localized heat to melt metal and fuse it together. Melted metal is molten liquid, albeit temporarily, which can cause problems.

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One of the most significant challenges of welding that you might not consider if you're new is the position in which you're welding. A 'standard' weld is horizontal and flat. You can move your welding gun over carefully positioned metal for maximum ease of access.  

What happens, though, if you need to weld the side of a surface, or even overhead?  

All sorts of issues can crop up when welding out of position. Foremost among them is gravity. When welding vertically, your weld pool can sag out of place, leading to a loss of filler material, uneven welds, drips, and weakness in the finished product.  

Overhead welding is even worse. Not only can the weld pool drip, but it can also be dangerous if it's above you and molten metal drips down onto you. That's one of many reasons why the proper safety equipment is 100% required for any welding you might do.

There are many considerations to make when you're welding vertically or overhead. Specific welding rods don't work in vertical or overhead positions; for example, they create weld pools that are too fluid and will drip out of place.

Sometimes there's no way around it. Shipbuilding and various construction welding applications are prime examples. It's not as though you can rotate a ship to weld the hull. Right?

Most of the time, the first step in a welding project is positioning your workpieces as conveniently as possible. That means rotating, moving, and repositioning the pieces you need to weld to get them in the right place.

Depending on the job and the scale of the materials you're working with, this may be easy or complicated. Large, heavy pieces of metal require manual repositioning, which may require more than one person to move the pieces. Accessing the area that you need to weld can take time and effort, even after the parts have been rotated.  

Thankfully, modern technology has gone a long way toward solving these problems. That's where a welding positioner comes into play.

What is a Welding Positioner?

Welding positioners are specialized tools to help maneuver, rotate, and reposition the items you're welding, to put them in an ideal position, no matter how large or unwieldy they are.

A positioner is not to be confused with a welding table. Welding tables are typically heavy metal tables that you can adjust in height for comfortable welding. You can clamp your working pieces to the table, often using magnetic clamps, but there's only one position for those pieces.  

A welding positioner is more advanced. Like a welding table, welding positioners have a metal surface that you can use with magnets to attach pieces you're going to weld together. Unlike a welding table, they can be angled and rotated while holding your working materials firm.

With a positioner, you can attach your working pieces to them and rotate and angle them so that welding horizontally and flat is faster, easier, and safer:

• First, secure the workpiece on the table and make sure it is stable and secure. 
• Then, switch on the drive system and set the rotation speed, tilt angle, and other settings as needed. 
• Once your pieces are in position, use a welding gun to perform the welding. 
• After completing your weld, switch off the drive system and remove the workpiece from the table.

Welding positioners are handy tools for a variety of welding applications. They can save welders time and effort by ensuring they only need to move the welding gun instead of repositioning the entire workpiece multiple times. Additionally, using a welding positioner can significantly improve the accuracy of welds, leading to higher-quality results with fewer mistakes. 

Welding positioners come in various sizes and configurations; having one of the appropriate sizes for the projects you typically take on can be extremely useful for your workshop.  

What Are the Different Types of Welding Positioners?

Like anything in this world, welding positioners come in many different forms.

The simplest welding positioners include stands, clamps, and mounts. These allow you to hang, adjust, rotate, and position materials you're planning to weld, but they require manual adjustment of the pieces rather than the table itself. They can be similar to jack stands or arm mounts, with two or so parts of articulation to make positioning your work surface as accurate as possible using simple mechanisms.

Slightly more advanced welding positioners are heavy-duty tables with robust mechanisms, often using gearing rather than manual adjustment and repositioning. 

Sometimes, you can use built-in clamping mechanisms to attach your project materials. Other times, you need magnetic clamps. Either way, these positioners have high weight capacities, allowing you to easily position and weld materials anywhere from 300 lbs. up to 10,000 lbs. 

Obviously, at higher weights, you're no longer using manual control to manipulate your project; the welding positioner typically has motorized controls.

The most advanced welding positioners are no longer tables or work surfaces. Instead, they're large and complex machines. These machines are more like workshop installations than they are workspace tools. However, they enable many valuable features, such as computer-controlled rotation and movement, and even automated welding you can program into the machine. These features allow you to create more complex welds around surfaces that need to be rotated and highly accurate, even welds.

Welding automation is often used for extremely large, very complex, or frequently-repeated projects, and it's a little outside the scope of today's post, so we'll bypass the details for now.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Welding Positioner?

Welding positioners have many potential benefits, some of which you might not think about at first glance.

1. Welding positioners make welding easier. Have you ever heard the phrase 'work smarter, not harder'? Welding positioners are an excellent tool for working smarter.

• They allow for faster, easier repositioning of items being welded.
• They make it easier to weld consistently across a surface, with less need to reposition.
• They minimize the risk of welding out of horizontal positioning, which is more challenging.

Instead of precariously balancing or securing pieces in awkward positions before welding, a welding positioner allows the welder to set up their work surface for maximum ease of use.

2. Welding positioners also make welding safer. The more you contort or hold an awkward position to weld, the more dangerous it is. The same goes for welding in enclosed spaces, at awkward angles, or where weld pools can drip dangerously from above. A welding positioner eliminates nearly all of these risks when used correctly.
3. Welding positioners facilitate greater access to tools and processes. Since some forms of welding cannot be done in overhead or vertical positions, and many fillers, electrodes, and other types of welding equipment can't be used in vertical or overhead positions, using a positioner enables a wider variety of known and 'easier' options for creating a join.

Many beginning welders train almost exclusively on horizontal welds, so they will be what you are likely most familiar with. Using a welding positioner allows you to adjust the items you're welding to ensure that you're working on a horizontal bead, even if you will position the finished product vertically or overhead.

4. Welding positioners reduce strain on the welder. Welding can be taxing work. Staring at exceptionally bright arcs of electricity, positioning yourself over material and holding a careful position, and moving with constant speed and precision are all very difficult to maintain for minutes (or longer) at a time. It's even more challenging if you're welding at an awkward angle or out of position in some way.

Again, while this may be unavoidable in some situations, the ideal is to use a welding positioner to minimize the strain welding places on your body and mind, allowing you to weld more, longer, and at a higher average quality level.

5. Welding positioners increase throughput. All of the above combine to make welding more manageable and faster. That means each welder can work more quickly, accurately, and longer without making mistakes due to fatigue. These benefits make it an excellent addition, particularly to fabrication companies and manufacturers, but it can also benefit hobbyists and artists.
6. Welding positioners can enable automation. As mentioned in passing above, welding positioners can also be attached to computerized systems and used to facilitate welding automation. Whether this means a fully automated system that consistently welds on its own every time, or just a computerized set of angles, rotations, and positions for a manual welder to handle, it streamlines the entire process.

With all of these benefits, it's no wonder that many businesses, factories, and other facilities commonly needing to weld materials will invest in welding positioners.

Are There Drawbacks to Welding Positioners?

There are a few relatively small drawbacks to using welding positioners, though most aren't really drawbacks, just considerations.

1. First and foremost is the price. While a basic desktop welding positioner costs a few hundred dollars, bulky, high-capacity or computerized welding positioners can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Full turn-key automated welding systems are the pinnacle of welding technology.
2. A second consideration is all of the extra space that a welding positioner takes up. All but the smallest welding positioners are large and often heavy machines. They must be heavy to hold large and awkward pieces of metal to weld them in place without wavering or falling over. 

Some shops need the floor or desk space to dedicate to a welding positioner. Those who can find the space often find it's a worthwhile tradeoff, so again, this isn't purely a drawback, merely a consideration to remember. Of course, the equipment necessary to reposition materials for welding without a positioner often takes up even more space, so that a positioner can be a net increase in floor space in some cases.

3. The more computerized and automated a welding system is, the more specialized the operation of the machine will be. If you're a welder used to welding manually and you don't mess with computerized systems, this can require a steep learning curve to operate appropriately. 

On the other hand, an automated system is unmatched for bulk welding and consistent throughput.

How to Use a Welding Positioner Properly

While every welding positioner is unique and will have its user guide, there are some generalized tips you can use to make sure you're getting the most out of your tools.

Here are our tips for first-time users of welding positioners:

• First, always pay attention to the center of gravity for your weldment. Welding positioners are generally built to be heavy and have a low center of gravity, so large and awkward weldments are still balanced or counterbalanced such that they stay in place. However, particularly large, heavy, or awkward weldments can cause problems if it isn't balanced correctly yet on the welding positioner.
• Similarly, remember the weight capacity ' both vertical and horizontal if necessary ' for the welding positioner you're using. Some have low weight capacities, such as a few hundred pounds, so overloading them will risk sagging out of position or even a sudden, catastrophic breakage.
• Make sure you're attaching your weldment correctly, as well. Many welding positioners are metal and can accept magnetic clamps, but they also have mechanical clamps and mounting holes for additional support. Make sure your weldment is firmly in position before starting the weld.
• Finally, make sure to use a welding positioner properly with the equipment you're using. For example, you may need to ground your welder in a particular fashion. Your welding positioner may have a dedicated place for attaching your ground; similarly, securing it in the wrong place can risk damaging any motors or electronic components that help the positioner function.

Does a welding positioner sound right for your project? If so, we have a wide variety of positioners of all shapes and sizes available for sale, lease, or rent. Depending on your needs, there will be something for everyone in our catalog.

The use of welding positioners can expand manufacturers' productivity and profit opportunities. Let's take a look at the benefits of using welding positioners and what you should know.

What is a welding positioner?

A welding positioner is a mechanical device that is used to fix and rotate a workpiece so that the welder can work at an appropriate angle and have a consistent surface. It has the ability to spin quickly, even when bearing significant weight. The main purpose of the welding positioner is to ensure that the workpiece is always in the most suitable welding position.

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Positioner increases welding throughput

Positioners can improve work efficiency because they eliminate wasted time in many ways. First, the welding positioner ensures the maximum arc time. Cranes, Chains, fixtures, and other types of rigging equipment require a lot of effort to move, and usually, welders have to wait around for the correct positioning of the workpiece-for a weldment, this may happen multiple times.

The use of the positioner also allows the welder to quickly manipulate the parts! When it comes to larger parts, the positioner allows one operator to handle the work and remove multiple people to reposition the part. This is reflected in the saving of labor and the liberation of employees to do other tasks.

Positioner improves welding quality

One of the main advantages of using the correct welding positioner is that consistent, high-quality welds can be obtained. During the welding process, any movement of the parts is difficult to produce high-quality welds. When your material is fixed, it allows sufficient weld penetration, and it also makes it easier to run complete weld repositioning without interruption. When it comes to welding quality, the welding positioner solves many problems because it rotates the workpiece at a controlled rate and speed to maintain a continuous, penetrating weld.

Welding positioner

Retrain and attract skilled welders

Since current welders are very thin, retaining and attracting skilled welders is a huge benefit to any manufacturer. The positioning machine allows the welder to work faster, longer, and easier. This equipment improves the working environment and makes it more attractive to skilled workers. The welding positioner also:

Improve safety

Allows skilled and entry-level welders to perform high-quality rotary welding

Improve employee morale

Use a semi-automatic function to reduce worker fatigue and increase production speed

5 things welders need to know about weld positioners

It is a well-known fact that positioning equipment can assist welders in maneuvering and welding large assemblies. What might not be so well-known is that many small assemblies also can be mechanically positioned to provide the welder with the same benefits.

The principles of positioning are the same for all weldments, large or small. The base product is affixed to the positioning equipment and then maneuvered by mechanical means into a position that allows the most effective welding and assembly. As parts or subassemblies are added, the entire weldment is moved to allow easy access to weld joints.

A properly positioned weldment, regardless of the size, reduces welder fatigue, increases safety, improves weld quality, and saves on production floor space. By moving the weldment using mechanical means and positioning the welding area into a comfortable range, welders are not forced to weld out of position or in an uncomfortable position.

Safety is improved when the weldment is anchored to a suitable positioning device. Cranes, chains, slings, and other nonrigid methods of moving a part might create uncontrolled motion, which can be dangerous. With the help of a positioner, welders don't have to maneuver themselves underneath a possibly heavy weldment, reducing the risk of injury from falling sparks, slag, or parts.

While many welders are qualified to do overhead and vertical welding, downhand welds often require less training, allowing new welders to produce quality welds. Gravity helps the welder in a downhill weld, resulting in equal legs on fillet welds, smoother bead surface, and reduced cleanup and rework times.

By combining a positioner with a welding power source and a torch stand, a welder can perform semiautomatic welding that is productive and ergonomically friendly. The positioner holds the part and maneuvers it under a stationary torch. This torch can be fitted with a weaving device to allow oscillation to fill large gaps or V-grooves. Consistent speed and torch position improve the quality of the weld with greater repeatability. By using a communication cable between the integrated positioner and a welding power supply, the operator only needs to signal a start through a foot pedal or a start button, and the welding cycle will continue until the signal is automatically sent that it has completed. This method, typically used on a circumferential weld, can incorporate dwell times to create a puddle and fill the crater. The completed part is removed and another is started.

HBJ-CNC Automatic Welding Positioner

Regardless of the size of the weldment, welders should keep these five suggestions in mind when selecting, operating, and maintaining a positioner.

1. Remember the COG

Selecting the right positioning device for the job involves accounting not only for the weight and size of the weldment, but also for the center of gravity (COG) and how far it is from the positioning device. COG is the point at which the weldment balances on all axes equally. As the distance increases from the device, more torque is applied to the positioner. The COG changes as the welder adds material and parts to the positioner, so these changes must be taken into account.

The table rotates by a variable-speed electric motor and can be hand- or foot-controlled. The positioner motor and control should be selected based on the size and speed that are required to perform the desired welding operation.

The positioner manufacturer's specifications will guide the motor and control choice. It's important for welders to check the specifications for both horizontal and vertical loading to make sure capacity is adequate to handle the weldment. The positioner should be able to withstand the largest possible load.

2. Attach Weldment Correctly

How a weldment is attached to a positioning device is as important as the positioner itself, because this is the point where separation would naturally occur. Production fixtures are designed for a specific application performed repeatedly. This type of fixture is mounted permanently to the positioner, and its specific shape allows for easy part alignment.

Round parts often are attached by a three-jaw chuck. The part must not pull away from the jaws when the part extends from the table. Also, the part may expand or contract from the heating and cooling that occur during and after the welding process, which can change the grip that the chuck has on the workpiece.

Fixtures and chucks add weight and distance from the faceplate, which needs to be considered when sizing the positioning device. While the weight of a weldment applies torque to the device, the distance that weight is applied multiplies the torque by the increase in distance. For example, a 50-lb. weldment that is 3 inches away from the face of the positioning table creates 12.5 ft.-lbs. of torque in the vertical position. If the distance is increased to 6 in., the torque increases to 25 ft.-lbs. at the mounting surface. The increased torque may require a larger-capacity machine.

Many positioners have slots that allow the workpiece to be bolted to the face. Welding the part to the positioner is often a good way to prevent shear forces from sliding the part as it is maneuvered. Any of these methods, whether stand-alone or combined, will work if applied properly.

3. Use Turning Rolls for Cylinders

If a weldment is cylindrical, it is eligible to be rolled. Small turning rolls'powered or idler type'can rotate a pipe or vessel to enable downhand welds. The power rolls provide steady rotation, producing an even circumferential weld. Idler rolls are not powered but can be added in series to support longer pipes and vessels. Often these are used for adding flanges to pipe ends and connecting pipes and ends to vessels.

The combination of a roller-type pipe stand and a vertical-faced table positioner provides stability and safety when a round part is extended outward. When the rollers provide two points of contact, the weight is distributed evenly, and the COG can be supported.

4. Keep It Flat

Even with small positioning equipment it is important that the unit be mounted to a flat, even surface to prevent it from tipping. If mounting holes are provided, they should be used to secure the positioner to a stable surface to prevent tipping when or if it encounters an unexpected force. A positioner mounted to a workbench or stand must be secured as well.

5. Connect Ground Current to the Positioner

During welding, a ground current should be connected to the positioner itself. The ground current transfers from the table and into the chassis, which eliminates having to remove and replace a welding clamp continuously. Without proper grounding, electrical parts can be damaged and substandard weld deposits made.

The positioner should be compatible with the electric current produced by the welding process. Also, all ground cables must be secured tightly by removing any paint before bolting to the carriage.

In recent years, welding positioners have developed rapidly in the construction machinery industry and have been widely used. Has quietly become indispensable machine equipment in the manufacturing industry.

Welding positioner is universal and efficient welding equipment, mainly used to realize circumferential seam welding. It can be equipped with welding machine power sources such as argon arc welding machine (filled welding machine or unfilled welding machine), melting electrode gas shielded welding machine, plasma welding machine, etc., and can form an automatic welding system with other welding machines. The product is mainly composed of a rotating head, displacement mechanism, and controller.

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