Taylor-Winfield Advances With Robotic Integration
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Taylor-Winfield Technologies is keeping pace with the manufacturing industry as it evolves toward automation and robotic integration.
The Youngstown company, a supplier of commercial welding and material joining machines, now specializes in fully automated systems that integrate many of the techniques it was founded on more than 130 years ago. These include resistance welding, induction heating, arc welding, capacitor discharge welding and linear friction welding.
And with the labor shortages and pandemic-accelerated staffing issues that plagued 2021, interest in Taylor-Winfield’s automated production equipment has soared.
“After a dismal 2020, the global economy came roaring back in 2021,” says the company’s president, Donnie Wells. “Companies just couldn’t find qualified and willing workers this past year, and so they turned to our automated solutions. We have more robots under our roof than at any other time in our company’s history.”
Taylor-Winfield’s robotic integration expertise has helped to automate a wide variety of tasks previously done manually. The list is long: drilling, riveting, routing, induction heating, bonding, banding, wrapping, chamfering, resistance welding, seam welding, ARC welding, induction heating, linear friction welding, flash butt welding and ARC cladding.
To address its own labor shortage, Wells says a leadership rotation development program was launched to attract and develop young talent. Participants rotate through various departments of the business to experience many types of positions before they land in one specific area.
Taylor-Winfield also rolled out several new products in 2021, chief among them a solid-state fiber laser welding system for the steel processing industry.
“The Eclipse X1 is the most technologically advanced laser welder, eclipsing all other current systems on the international market,” says Blake Rhein, vice president of sales. “Made in the USA, the Eclipse X1 overcomes variation in strip shape and presentation, and offers real time feedback to ensure the highest weld quality.”
Also new is Taylor-Winfield’s InduroScan Vertical Induction Scanner, used mainly in the automotive sector, according to Rhein. The scanner is designed to harden cylindrical parts and shafts efficiently.
And Taylor-Winfield introduced a new line of resistance welders that offer the same quality welds with an economical price tag. Referred to as the “Essential” line, these seam, spot and flash welders will fit most budgets and production requirements.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
