I went to FABTECH 2024 and saw robots… the end.

Only joking. I also got to see Disney World.

Please see attached pics of me looking like a Bee Gee, and below YouTube video of me messing about in Orlando. To summarise, I’m liking Cobots. They’re alright. But, they’re very limited. Robotics used on a £multibillion car production line work in conjunction with countless other multi-axis robots and PLC control systems etc. A Cobot welder on its own in the corner in a chaotic shop is always going to seem lonely and limited. Considering they can only tackle such a small % of actual fabrication work, I couldn’t believe how many display stands were all showcasing robot arms. Literally nearly all of them. Although, my new mate Jake @ ESAB showed me some amazing weave sequences he’d programmed.

I know it sounds like I have a gripe with Cobots (because I do), but the setup time is still a bit extensive & fiddly, and I don’t actually see anyone on LinkedIn actually talking about their their limitations. There, I said it. I’m perplexed. I almost feel bad about it. I woke up and chose war today, so have it hahaha. But after seeing a lot of sterilised rubbish on here and nothing of much interest other than ‘I went to work’, I think sometimes it’s good to encourage a look behind the curtain.

The obsession with Cobots though really does baffle me. Fab shop jobs are all different and get dumped randomly anywhere (and it’ll be like this forever!), and it’s much easier for a welder to walk round and just weld it with a super-duper new shiny ESAB welding machine! (I bet you were all waiting for my big ESAB are the best speech - and ESAB are the best). Good welders are hard to find and increasingly so and it's a nightmare, but they exist. I reckon the real emphasis should still be on how to encourage the next generation to take up welding apprenticeships, and get them paid well for it (rather than in washers). So yea, kids about to leave college need to be shown a long lists of incentives for being a welder / and or a plater. I don’t actually know how that is being done to be honest, or if at all.

But anyway, FABTECH Expo 2024 was superb. It’s great to see companies wanting to be innovative and investing, and it’s all a natural evolution and a step in the right direction towards a Telsa type Optimus AI controlled robot holding a laser welding torch crawling up a hopper via hand magnets like a Spidey-Robot Terminator type thing, telling the other welders “Judgement day is coming”. HR will not be impressed Optimus! That dystopian I, Robot vision right there escalated by the second, but I enjoyed it and I refuse to edit it out and I hope that future reality comes true one day (minus AI taking over the world and enslaving us).

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