2024-08-20
At the 27th Essen Welding & Cutting Fair in 2024, Dauphin Smarts unveiled multiple teach-free welding cells with Kawasaki Robotics and Shanghai Hezong, and announced that from September 1, 2024 the teach-free welding system software would be permanently free for domestic 3D camera, line-laser and vision sensor vendors.
From August 13 to 16, 2024, the 27th Essen Welding & Cutting Fair (Essen Welding Show) was held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. As one of the largest and most influential welding industry events worldwide, the show integrates upstream and downstream supply-chain resources and offers an in-depth networking platform for professionals.
Jiangsu Dauphin Smart Manufacturing Co., Ltd. ("Dauphin Smarts") exhibited together with Kawasaki Robotics (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. ("Kawasaki Robotics") and Shanghai Hezong Welding Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. ("Shanghai Hezong"), showcasing several series of teach-free welding cells designed to break the bottleneck of complex programming and teaching faced by traditional welding robots.
Dauphin Smarts' teach-free welding cell drew wide attention at the Kawasaki booth. Visitors showed strong interest in this system that handles complex welding tasks autonomously, asking detailed questions about its technology and application prospects.
On site, the cell demonstrated efficient, precise welding — particularly on non-standard and irregular workpieces — earning recognition from industry experts and potential customers. Its release marks a major step forward in welding automation, offering smarter and more flexible solutions for steel structure, shipbuilding and other sectors.
Dauphin engineers offered detailed technical talks and live demonstrations at the Kawasaki booth, walking visitors through the cell's workflow and benefits. Many corporate representatives expressed strong cooperation intent after discovering how significantly the technology improves productivity and weld quality.
The teach-free welding system also made its debut at partner Shanghai Hezong's booth, presenting a new application scenario combining collaborative robots with intelligent welding for ship-and-marine and steel-structure welding. The display drew visitors from across and beyond the industry and sparked lively discussion about the future of cobot-based intelligent welding.
By seamlessly integrating with cobots, the Dauphin teach-free system delivers a more flexible and intelligent welding solution — with notable gains in productivity, cost and product quality.
Demand for welding robots in steel structure and shipbuilding has surged over the past two years, yet the application challenges are heavy: countless non-standard products, complex irregular parts, variable working environments and intrinsically complex welding processes mean traditional robotic welding can no longer meet the rising standards. The "teach-free" approach has emerged as a hot topic.
Machine vision captures and analyses surface images of the workpiece to precisely locate the seam, while deep learning, built on top of large welding datasets, forms an AI model of welding procedures tailored to different seam features. This model autonomously adjusts welding parameters and motion paths based on each seam, enabling truly intelligent and automated welding. Robots equipped with Dauphin's AI autonomous-decision welding system can adapt to far more complex scenes and demanding tasks.
To further advance China's vision-sensor technology in welding, from September 1, 2024 Dauphin Smarts opened its Robot Teach-Free Welding System software to domestic 3D camera, line-laser and vision sensor vendors free of charge and permanently — limited to 10 companies.
Following the early-2024 free release of the software to 30 robot integrators and OEMs, Dauphin's system has gained rapid market recognition and broad adoption, supporting multiple leading domestic and overseas robot brands. Those 30 slots are now nearly full and the integrators on board have built significant technical and cost advantages.
Through this fully open programme, Dauphin Smarts hopes to lower R&D costs for sensor companies entering teach-free welding and accelerate adoption in real production, delivering more cost-effective solutions to manufacturers.