APPLICATION

Welding (MIG / TIG)

Cobot-welding cells are the application where the bare arm is a small fraction of total cost. Torch + wire feed + safety + fume extraction dominate.

Installed cell cost

Not published

Payback

Not published

FTEs displaced

Not published

Leading cobots

3 models

ON THESE FIGURES

Not published. AMD Machines' payback scenarios cover machine tending, palletizing, quality inspection and assembly, but not welding. The source this page previously cited for a 10-16 month welding payback has been removed from the web and returns HTTP 410. Price a welding cell from the line items below and your own welder-hour cost.

01 / OPERATIONAL SHAPE

What this application actually is.

Cobot welding has matured fastest in 2024-2026 against a thin welding labour market: the AWS Foundation projects that 320,500 new welding professionals will be needed in the US by 2029, with an average of 80,000 welding jobs to fill each year between 2025 and 2029. The application fits cobot economics well — short-batch fabrication shops doing repetitive welds where a full robotic welding cell is uneconomic. The cost structure is also the least arm-dominated in the category: a welding cell adds a power source, wire feeder and torch, fume extraction, safety screens and path-teaching software on top of the arm, so the arm is a smaller share of the cell here than in machine tending. We do not publish a payback range for welding. The integrator data we use for the other four applications does not cover it, and we would rather leave the number out than estimate one.

02 / LEADING COBOTS FOR THIS APPLICATION

Which cobot fits, and why.

01Techman Robot TM12

12 kg · 1300 mm · $32,000-38,000

Built-in vision moat applies to seam tracking. TMvision can guide weld path corrections without a separate seam-tracker — saves $8-18K on the cell.

02FANUC CRX-10iA

10 kg · 1249 mm · $40,000-52,000

FANUC's industrial welding heritage (Aloha welding software ecosystem cross-portfolios) makes CRX-10iA a strong second cobot in welding-heavy shops.

03Universal Robots UR10e

12.5 kg · 1300 mm · $45,000-60,000

12.5 kg payload carries a water-cooled torch and cable bundle without eating the duty cycle, and the URCap ecosystem covers seam-tracking and path-teaching add-ons. Note that the best-known packaged cobot welder, Lincoln Electric's Cooper, is built on the FANUC CRX-10iA/L rather than a UR arm — if you want the turnkey route, that points at the CRX above.

03 / THE KILLER LINE ITEM

The cost most buyers underestimate.

Welding power source + wire feeder + torch

$15,000-$40,000

Lincoln Electric Cooper, Miller Auto-Continuum, OTC DTPS. Our own estimate: power source plus integrated feeder and torch runs $15-25K mid-tier and $30-40K for high-amperage or pulsed-TIG. None of these vendors publishes a package list price. Non-negotiable, and rarely included in cobot-arm quotes.

04 / NO-PAYBACK FAILURE MODES

How welding (mig / tig)cells don't earn back.

Underestimating fume extraction + safety screens

OSHA-compliant fume extraction (Lincoln Statiflex, Donaldson Torit) runs $5-12K. Cobot welding cells without it fail OSHA inspection and add cost retroactively.

Trying to weld parts beyond cobot duty cycle

Cobot arms are typically rated for 60-70% duty cycle. Continuous heavy welding can exceed this; check arm thermal rating before committing.

Programming as one-time cost

Each new weldment requires path-teaching. Shops that don't budget for ongoing programming labour (~$300-600/programmer-day) find cells idle when the program runs out.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

Machine tending (CNC load / unload)Palletizing and case-packing Quality inspection Assembly and dispensing

Source: https://weldingworkforcedata.com/ · Payback, installed cell cost and FTE displacement are transcribed from AMD Machines' published payback scenarios (March 2026) where that source covers the application. Wage anchors are BLS CES and ECEC. The line-item costs in sections 03 and 04 are our own estimates, flagged as such, not published prices. Checked 2026-10-02.