Effective Filtration for highly critical robotic welding line

The Client is a German supplier of chassis to global Automobile manufacturers. The Client’s workshop in has number of welding stations for various processes. The plant used Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs) from another supplier to extract and filter the harmful welding fumes and smoke.

Challenge

  • However, the operators and maintenance team at the Client’s shop-floor were unhappy with the performance of their existing ESP
  • With the fume & smoke spreading on the shop-floor, there were doubts about the filtration effectiveness of the ESP
  • The cleaning of ESPs also required substantial time which further added to irritation of the staff

Approach

SFS was requested to assess and suggest a solution for Client’s highly critical robotic welding line for manufacturing automobile Chassis. A team of specialists from SFS visited the Client’s plant multiple times to study the seven stations and clearly understand the requirements from filtration perspective.

The assessments highlighted several shortcomings in design of the existing filtration system including insufficient suction mechanism, pressure and speed along with faulty hood designs. After exhaustive calculations SFS suggested a centralized Media based filter with high suction capacity. This was a paradigm shift for the Client, which traditionally used only ESPs to filter the welding fumes.

Solution

Typically welding fumes flows in upward direction and the hood mounting ensured that the welding fume and smoke was captured in its natural flow. Curtains were installed to reduce the disturbance to ambient air due to fan or any such reason. The hybrid material in ducting used a combination of metallic as well as flexible ducts to provide endurance and flexibility. The centralized ducting came with total flexibility to remove duct in instances which mandated removal of hood for performing maintenance or upgrade activities on the robotic cells.

Benefits

Low maintenance filtration system

The media based filtration also reduced burden of handling of high voltage in case of ESPs

Consistent filtration, critical to functioning of sensitive robotic cells

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