Articles by Carrie Halle

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, injuries to hands accounted for nearly 25 percent of all lost-time industrial injuries - a total of 110,000 annually. Seventy percent of those injuries resulted when an employee was not wearing safety gloves, while the other 30 percent of hand injuries occurred while an employee was wearing the wrong kind of gloves.

When it comes to accidents, manufacturing ranks second highest of all industries. That comes despite OSHA regulations and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards. A key culprit is unguarded hazardous machinery. 

Robotic welding provides manufacturers with several competitive advantages. Most importantly, it makes them more productive while generating more consistent, higher quality welds and reducing waste. Robots also empower manufacturers to address the current shortage of skilled welders to recruit.

Unlike conventional machinery, robots lack the intelligence of a human operator. In the event of a programming error or hardware malfunction robots have the potential to unexpectedly move large distances at a high rate of speed, posing a serious danger to operators or maintenance personnel.