Success Story
Upgrade to Advance Welding Technology Contributes to Company’s Productivity
About Morbark
Morbark, headquartered in Winn. Michigan, has been serving the forestry, recycling, and biomass industries for over 60 years. From its humble roots as a simple blacksmithshop to their current 1.1-million-square-foot manufacturing complex, Morbark has made a name for itself as a leading manufacturer of high-quality tree chippers, stump grinders and more.
78%
Energy Cost Savings
The Challenge
With products weighing in at 56 tons, and fabrication schedules ranging anywhere from two hours up to four weeks, Morbark’s welding performance and efficiency are imperative to the company’s overall success. With an installation base of primarily older SCR (silicon -controlled rectifier) welding equipment, the company realized it was time to explore newer, more efficient welding technology as they continued to strive for maxim um production performance.
20%
Increase in Production
The Answer
Utilizing their long-time partnership, Morbark relied on local Lincoln Electric Sales Reps to introduce the latest technology that Lincoln Electric had to offer. After reviewing the latest Power Wave® advanced process welders, Morbark quickly realized upgrading their installation base with these advanced welders was the way to go.
The Results
It didn’t take long for the company to realize the considerable energy savings these new inverter-based powers sources provided. In addition to energy savings, Morbark experienced significant production improvements thanks to Power Wave’s Waveform Control Technology®, allowing them to use advance pulsed waveforms for improved heat input control – helping prevent distortion, as well as burn through on their thinner materials.
Morbark also quickly discovered the benefits Lincoln Electric’s CheckPoint® production monitoring technology – a standard feature on every Power Wave® system. This cloud-based production monitoring tool allowed key welding personnel to remotely monitor productivity of each machine, evaluate individual welder arc-on time and analyze short- and long-term production stats.
We use more than 75 different welding procedure settings and the monitoring allows us to uniformly control the machines across the boards and create consistency between welders
—Barry Sellers, Morbark Production Supervisor