Welcome to visit us at Elmia

Elmia Subcontractor in Jönköping Sweden is northern Europe’s leading trade fair in the manufacturing industry for suppliers and their customers. This is a true specialist fair for product development and purchasing.

Fortaco will take part in Elmia Subcontractor 13 - 16 November. Use this opportunity and visit Fortaco booth to get the latest news within product development and latest information about Fortaco´s capabilities within Steel Fabrications, Vehicle Cabins and Vehicle Assembly.

We have also launched Fortaco Technology unit to offer the best-in-class product development and manufacturing technology in one package. During Elmia Subcontractor you can meet with Fortaco Technology team and see our possibilities within virtual and augmented reality in cabin design and quality control. The new reality of R&D is close to our heart. Check out the recent blog by our Senior Vice President for Technology, PhD Rafal Sornek.

Please come and visit our stand in Hall D - D02:24 and discuss with our team what we can offer for your company!

See you in Jönköping, Sweden on 13–16 November 2018!


Still Waiting for the Robot Rapture

The popular press may lead you to believe that the Singularity is right around the corner. But a Fortaco welding engineer explains why robots used on big structures must dramatically improve before they’ll completely replace human welders.

by Jari Hakalahti, QHSE Manager & Welding Engineer
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Manufacturing professionals who are not welding engineers — often those who have been justifiably amazed by functioning robot lines –sometimes talk about robotic welding as if it's incredibly simple. Just throw the parts in the air, press a button, and voilà, your finished product is ready to ship!

At Fortaco, we enthusiastically use robots whenever they make real sense for our business, yet our behind-the-scenes vantage point forces us to think in sober terms. The robot revolution may one day arrive: robot welders which (who?) understand, learn, and adapt to changing conditions while they weld. But before this day comes, there are a host of issues which need to be sorted out.

Can you match this, bots?
At our factory in Kalajoki, Finland, our 40 welders produce around 7,000 tons of welded structures every year, among them 32-ton steel base plates on to which ship engines and generators weighing over 70 tons will be fastened. Given the millions of loading cycles and vibrations our welds will endure over the ship engine's lifetime, there is not much room for error.

For a robot to match human quality, it will need to see air gaps and immediately adapt. It will have to be sensitive to environmental conditions and immediately compensate. And of course it will have to figure out how to get to those hard-to-reach places and corners where a bot isn’t currently up to the job, or can’t be repositioned without major human effort.
Another challenge is tack welding. Since robots can drive over tack welds and may cause defects underneath, humans are necessary to ensure even quality. Assuming a robot could tack weld, you'd also need another robot who could position the parts perfectly. Yes, this can be (and is) done for simple products and huge volumes, but it doesn't make sense for Fortaco’s biggest structures over 15 meters long and weighing 32 tons.

A challenge to suppliers
The size of the structure presents other problems. If you want robots to weld them, you need perfectly-cut and pre-bent parts to avoid gaps and weld stress deformation in big structures.
Also, as any hobby welder knows, a large part of good welding is positioning the parts before you begin to weld. And even beyond the realm of robotization, we see that most new welding technologies demand very accurate parts and plate fitting. Parts manufacturers may wish to take this as a challenge, as the success of robots is partly in their hands.

It’s payback time
For robots to match human performance is not impossible, but it is expensive. Optical sensors, temperature sensors, cameras, sound sensors – all these are required to approximate the human welder. Not only are these items expensive, but they take up massive amounts of space.
Please don’t view me as a Luddite – I’m very much in favor of robotization. I love that robots don’t take coffee breaks and that they can turn a part in a second without the use of a crane. It’s just that I work with big structures and robots every day. I know their limitations.
In many Fortaco factories we have products that suit well to robot use, and we will no doubt continue to invest in robot welding in the future. [SD1] But since we’re also running a business, we have to be very careful about which robots we invite into our lives.
From an investment point of view, we cannot wait an eternity for a return on the investment. With robots, the investment is huge and the payback time is long. There’s always the risk of investing today in yesterday’s technology, and recouping only a fraction of your original investment. So before we invest, we need to be convinced the robot will make a meaningful contribution.

Sympathy for the bots
Perhaps it’s time we humans show some sympathy for robots. After all, sometimes it’s we humans who are holding them back. Robot manufacturers, interested in sales, often provide numbers that are too optimistic. For us, the best measure of efficiency is how much welding wire is used in one hour. A human welder uses approximately one-half to two kilograms per hour, depending on the welding process used. For the jobs robots can do, they use four to ten kilos per hour, depending on the set-up. It’s great efficiency, but the main issue (which is usually forgotten in comparisons) is that it’s the only part of the welding phase that can be automated — welding set-up and finalization must still be done manually. Therefore, the over-the-moon numbers some robot makers give you for the overall performance boost are not always accurate.

Also, robots can literally suffer from prejudice. Take welding around notches, for example. In some conditions, robots can do this work well, but some humans still oppose their use. Even when robots achieve the required state of development, humans may still make decisions about their use using outdated information. It takes a while for information about their proven track record to circulate. Poor robots. We’re lucky they don’t yet have emotions.

As professionals, the best thing we can do is to attempt to understand the real applications of robots, accept that they are not the universal fix-all in manufacturing, and not demand too much of them. From time to time, we might even offer a little bit of robot love.


Business Site Narva – our competence center for high strength steel

Business Site Narva is the biggest steel fabrication factory in Fortaco Group in terms of turnover and number of employees. We are manufacturing welded, machined and painted steel fabrications of 0.5 - 5 tons in weight for the heavy industry, i.e. material handling, construction, forestry equipment and mining. Having long lasting experience in high strength steel processing, we have established ourselves as a reliable partner to our customers.

The recent investments into laser cutting, robot welding, CNC machining, SMED technology and software foster the high performing organization living the One Customer Driven Fortaco culture.
Business Site Narva is expanding, a new best in class factory of 10.000 m2 is welcoming new business.

Watch the video >


Augmented Reality in Quality Control

Fortaco was showing its application of Augmented Reality in Quality Control for the first time at Tampere Subcontracting Fair end of September.
We challenge you to estimate, how much time do you save with this application compared to the traditional paper-pencil-manual input excel toolchain.
Watch the video to see how it works. Video was recorded when one of the visitor made testing at our stand.

Watch the video >>


New 5-axis CNC-center at Business Site Janów Lubelski

Fortaco Business Site Janów Lubelski has strengthened one of its core competence - CNC machining - by investing in a new 5-axis CNC-center. The chosen model is Zayer Kairos 6000, which is one of the best machines in its class with excellent service performance, efficiency and machining accuracy.

With the new CNC-machine Business Site Janów Lubelski is able to grow along with the increased customer demand and provide with complex machined structures. The machine portfolio at Business Site Janów Lubelski includes also a 5-axis TX3 Juaristi CNC-center.

Since August we have implemented several products, the new machine is working at full speed.


Thank you for visiting us at Subcontracting Trade Fair

Fortaco's Team wants to thank all of you who visited us at Tampere Subcontracting Trade Fair and showed interest in our new applications.
See you at Elmia Subcontractor Exhibition in Jönköping, Sweden 13.-16.11.2018.