WELDING WEEK 2011 - Why visit?

Why visit?

The exhibition brings together suppliers of all kinds of products (equipment, accessories, chemicals) and services currently available on the market.

Lively demos and free seminars turn WELDING WEEK into a dynamic and versatile meeting platform.

Focus 2011

Automation (robotics) in welding, in pre and post welding operations, and in workpiece handling, as well as safety requirements for automated systems.

Robots and manipulators can be used to automate a large number of operations and processes:

MIG and TIG welding, spot welding, resistance welding
Supply, set-up and clamping of parts
Loading of presses, belt conveyors
Machine loading and workpiece handling
Measurement and inspection
Assembling
Grinding, turning, milling, polishing, seaming, bending
Spraying, coating
Packaging, palletising

With falling robot prices and more user-friendly software, automation is also becoming popular for increasingly smaller series, bringing it within the reach of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Special 2011

Innovative welding, joining, cutting and cladding processes with focus on decreased heat input and/or increased speed and/or increased accuracy.

Laser-based materials processing started with the glass laser, followed by the Nd:YAG laser and the CO2 laser and later the diode laser as intermediate station. Today’s high power lasers include the improved diode laser, the disc laser, the fibre laser, and the ever popular CO2 laser. The processing time has moved from CW (cutting) to milliseconds (welding) to microseconds (drilling) to nanoseconds (engraving, ablation) and now to femtoseconds.

Continual advances in power output, efficiency, beam quality, controllability mean that the laser has and will continue to have a very high innovation potential.

Cold welding (cold arc, cold weld, cold metal transfer, etc.) for joining different metals (e.g. aluminium/steel) or galvanised steel sheets, or for joining pieces of different thicknesses, or extremely thin sheets. Low heat input is a key factor here.

Glueing (hot melts, adhesives, industrial glueing, bonding). Glueing has witnessed dramatic changes in recent years. Existing adhesives have gained in quality and new adhesives are being developed daily. Furthermore, light metals (aluminium, titanium), plastics and ceramic materials are increasingly being applied. Examples are the pioneering work in aviation and space, yacht construction and automotive industry.