Products

Wire detection

The Wire Wizard wire sensor is a switch used at drums that detects the end of the welding wire as it passes the switch. It can be used to turn on/off alarms such as lights or sounds, but the data coming from the switch is mostly used in the robot program.

Key features:

  • Compatibility: Detects Mild Steel, Stainless Steel, Aluminum and Nickel wires.
  • Operational simplicity: Functions as a switch, activating based on the presence or absence of wire.

The sensor holder is always used in combination with the direct pull kit WWDP.
The socket with the ceramic insert is used inside the drum cone, the sensor holder is on top.
The female connector makes the set easy connectable to the other Wire Wizard components.

In case you don’t use a wire-end-sensor the robot will keep on welding until the end of the wire passes the wire feeder when a drum of welding wire is empty. If the end of the wire rans out the wire feeder the wire in the contact-tip will “burn-back” and the robot will stop. This can happen at any moment during the welding-program, this means that the robot will stop in the middle of a weld.
The product in process at that moment will not be finished and the robot will be in an error-mode.
To get the robot back into production again you’ll need a robot-engineer to come and get the robot out of this error-mode.
The half-finished product must be either finished by hand or thrown away.
The contact tip has to be replaced, a new drum installed and then the program can be restarted.
You really want to avoid that!

When using the wire-end-sensor, the robot can be programmed in a way that when the signal “drum empty” comes in, the robot will finish the weld with the wire left over in the wire-conduit,
after that the robot moves into a rest position. The operator can replace the drum and will just have to push start to resume production.

No more Burn-back, no more half-finished products, more production!

Available models
The Sensor is available in two different types

  1. Normally open
    This means that if the sensor is powered and it detects no wire it is OPEN
    As soon as it detects wire the switch will CLOSE
    In practice this means that during normal welding the contact of the switch is closed.
    And when the end passes the sensor the contact of the switch will open.
  2. Normally closed
    This means that if the sensor is powered and it detects no wire it is CLOSED
    As soon as it detects wire the switch will OPEN
    In practice this means that during normal welding the contact of the switch is OPEN.
    And when the end passes the sensor the contact of the switch will close.