Pinet Industrie

For the hinge specialist Pinet Industrie, welding now goes in hand with robotisation! In 2016, when the company located in Chaulnes (Somme, France) made the change, it had been thinking about acquiring a welding robot for several years. In order to validate their approach and gain a better understanding of the prerequisites, the company managers decided to seek support from Cetim’s assembly experts.

Making the right choice

Further to a one-day field analysis, Pinet Industrie decided to continue its research efforts. “We had already made significant headway in the drafting of the specifications,” explained Sébastien Lagarde, technical manager at Pinet Industrie. However, with Cetim’s assistance, we revised the essential prerequisites to which the various suppliers had not alerted us.” Following a recalibration of the needs and precise determination of the cycle times required to ensure profitability of the project, new specifications were prepared and finally the Valk Welding solution was selected.

Acceptance,validation and compliance

Once the order was placed, the managers of Pinet Industrie and a Cetim expert flew to Rotterdam to the manufacturer’s head office to take delivery of the robot and carry out a check on site with Pinet parts of proper compliance with the cycle times. Based on the results obtained, the delivery was accepted and the robot arrived in Chaulnes one week later accompanied by two technicians tasked with training the operators in a few hours on how to programme and control the robot. The Pinet managers now want to take things a step further by undertaking larger series and ensuring conformity of the facilityand adherence to each customer’s specific requirements.“Our robot has now bee been operating for one year toour great satisfaction", concluded Sébastien Lagarde. “Today, with Cetim’s help we are continuing with the qualification phase of the welding process in order to comply with applicable standards and the specified requirements of a number of our customers.”