An innovative fully automatic facility in welding process: the erection state in the railway construction industry, where auxiliary operations are carried out automatically and a relevant improvement is assured to the working environment

The most critical step in railway wagon production is its erection, by which the four modules-floor, two side walls and roof-are assembled to a large Al pipe, with 4 exterior and interior welds. The paper illustrates a project that realises an innovative fully automatic facility for the erection state production process in the railway construction industry. The complete joining operation and the auxiliary processes are carried out automatically. An additional rail system in the interior allows a carrier for the welding torch to be moved, since it is intended that no human operator shall be in the wagon shell during operation. A full quality control system includes a sensor system for verification. The solution is outstanding, especially for the construction of high speed trains, together with a considerable improvement of the working environment, due to no direct contact with fumes and machining particles. The automatic performance also offers the option to join processes as double wire techniques of MIG/TIG combi process. A 15% reduction of the production hours and 25% of total production time for wagon crates is estimated.