Always on top of the latest metal fabrication technology, Gillaspie Manufacturing thought we’d give you a rundown of some of the coolest new products on the market that we have our eye on.

FABTECH held in November 2017 in Chicago is touted as “North America’s largest metal forming, metal fabricating, welding and finishing event.”

This event provides a one location for manufacturers to meet with suppliers, and check out the latest industry products and developments.

This is where we can find the tools to improve our productivity and bring new solutions to our clients with metal forming, metal fabricating, welding and finishing needs.

Here are some of the top products found this year:

Collaborative Robot for Gas-Metal-Arc Welding. This new collaborative robot (cobot) by SnapWeld was developed by Arc Specialties Inc. and Universal Robots.

This Cobot is an interactive welding system that is easy and flexible to use with existing manual welding booths, which ends the need for new robotic cells

You can stich weld by teaching the UR10 robot arm beginning and end points as well as how many and how long you want the stich weld.

The system moves along the path you taught the cobot and welds only where you specified, which reduces the programming from hours to minutes

Universalrobots.com


Robotic Inspection System has 3D Vision: ABB’s state of the art inspection technology was combined with their signature display and the flexibility of robotic manipulation.

This new robotic inspection system has 3D vision integrated into it and uses digital scans to detect any possible defects on manufactured parts.

The sensor technology will record and then compare surface and geometric data with digital CAD models, which will in turn enable an automated inspection of manufactured parts and pieces. The result is that users can raise quality by reducing cycle times and also reducing the risk of quality control errors.


Safely Isolate Hazardous Ops with this Automatic Door: the Gortite Verticle Fabric (VF) door by Dynatect Manufacturing, was designed to safely isolate hazardous operations.

The roll up door works in conjunction with your existing machine-guard panels on each side to further improve the separation of environments. It has safety features such as a traveling photo-eye sensor that will bring the door to a full stop in a matter of seconds.


CNC Plasma Cutting Machine by Park Industries: this Kano HD CNC plasma cutting machine has bidirectional positional accuracy within .004in. and repeatability within .001in. The system uses Hypertherm’s Rapid Part Technology to optimize speed productivity.

The base and gantry beam are heavy steel weldments with a Hypertherm Edge Connect CNC and Hypertherm HPRXD or XPR300 high def plasma system for cutting up to 2 inches thick.
Parkindustries.com


Compact Waterjet Cutting for Prototypes: this handy little guy from Omax Corp. is the ProtoMax abrasive waterjet machine.

It’s made for prototyping, light industry, education, artists and the maker movement. It’s perfect for low volume work, a cost effective way to explore waterjet cutting technology for almost any material less than 2 inches thick.

They implement many of the same CAD/CAM software features from their industrial waterjet systems, and submerge your work material underwater for a clean and quiet cut.


Schwarze-Robitec Automated Tube and Pipe Bending: The new CNC 100E TB MR tube-bending machine allows for production of different radii or bend-in-bend systems (ie: manifolds, exhaust pipes)

These full electric and multi-stack CNC tube bending machines allow for a range of different tuve and profile dimensions to be bent. Cycle times are short, fast and highly accurate. The Quick Tool Unlock system provides rapid changing of bending tools to optimize set up time and also reduces the machine’s downtime
Schwarze-robitec.com


Well after all that machine candy, we can’t wait to see what is at next year’s FABTECH conference which is in Atlanta on November 2018. Happy cutting, bending, and welding!

Update: Check out the FABTECH 2018 promo video