Rob Goldiez with Hirebotics

00:03

Welcome to the Industrial Talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's go.

00:21

Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk. We are broadcasting on site on site right now. FABTECH, Atlanta, Georgia, it is a great event, put this on your calendar, it's a must attend event. If you're not here this year, be here next year, I don't even know where it is where it's gonna be. In

00:39

fact, I have no clue. Rob's gonna be somewhere,

00:42

we're just gonna have to jettison that question. Anyway, this platform, the Industrial Talk platform is dedicated to you industrial professionals all around the world, because you are bold, you are brave and daring greatly. You're solving problems like Rob's company, and you are making the world a better place. And as you can tell, Rob is in the hot seat by robotics is the company let's get a car wreck. And I rob you doing? I figure I can I can use your your product. Now. I was telling everybody about it. Anybody that was walking on by said check this out. I I programmed a welding whatever. Well, it was just a line.

01:21

Welding Cobot. You're a pronoun.

01:23

I'm a pro. Yeah. It was on your, which I gotta tell you, man, it's pretty cool. I was telling everybody. There was a, a young, young gentleman. He's getting his welding, certification and all that stuff. And I said, you gotta go over to see, you gotta go over to see and check out this particular company. And I said, you will be dazzled by I did this. And I was telling them what I did. It's amazing, isn't it? I was trying to develop some street cred.

01:50

Got that credit for like, three minutes. That's

01:52

after three minutes. I said, Yeah, I did that I ran that beat? No, it was it's a hypothetical beat. All right, for the listeners out there just for them to understand who Rob is. Give us a little background on who you are.

02:06

Yeah, so I'm the co founder and CEO of higher robotics, we do cobalt welding. But what's really unique about how we approach the market is we focus on the welder, not the robot programmer. And so you saw that as being our test subject yesterday as the welder

02:21

and I knocked it out of the park, everybody I just did. I'm an easy learning guy. No, it was

02:26

amazing. Trust us. Yeah, it was. But it's all app based. So it's a connected product. People use an app on an iPad and iPhone, Android web, and they teach the robot. And so there's no programming at all, nothing on a future benefit. No complicated robot jargon to deal with you just point and click.

02:45

Yeah, I was I was pretty dazzled by it. You know, long ago. It was it was over a year ago. Now who was much longer ago. And when I was weld, it was welding. Right? This was just just absolutely fascinating technology. What was the genesis behind? Where were you? What was the problem? You were solving? What? Why?

03:06

Yeah, it's a it's a good question. We, myself and Matt, who started the company, we had purchased Universal Robots and companies that we had worked or worked for in the past, we had familiar with automation. But it's really hard. And it's almost like automation is this protected space by the experts, right? And we kind of want to figure out how to get automation into any company make it accessible for any company. And so we feel like the easiest way to do that is put the technology in the hands of people that are not automation pros, but in a way that it makes them very comfortable. And so to do that, the way we know how to do that, at least is through apps, right? People understand apps, whether you're a grandfather, or a three year old kid. And so if we can bring the experience into an app format, right, we can do a lot of different things in terms of controlling that experience and make it really easy to use.

03:54

04:25

There you go. You've been around a little bit. And you must have seen some really interesting changes, challenges, technology, all of that stuff. Take us through that just whole process. You say, Hey, you're sitting around a table and you say, Would it be great to be able to do that?

04:42

Yeah. So when we started actually weren't doing welding. We did all sorts of different applications with Cobots. But what we saw over and over again is you know, we're not we don't come from the welding industry, or at least my Matt and myself, but we've hired people on but help with that. But you can go Back to the 90s and read statistics from American Welding Society about the shortage of skilled welders will those same problems exist today? So it's like, what's been done to solve it, right? Like everybody's making trying to make automation a little easier, but they're, they're just trying the same things over and over again. And so we thought we had an opportunity to do it a different way right to to approach it a different way to really, really make it accessible to welders, and not take the traditional approach that people will take with automation

05:25

do you do find, there is a resistance of a pushback, hey, I'm a I'm a skilled welder. I, I've done this and I've run this speed. And I've used this application. And I know and I understand these metal and all of that there's, there's a, there's a pride that goes on with with being a welder. And rightly so was there any pushback on this or

05:47

so not really, what happens over and over again, is that we get contacted by companies that cannot find welders. Right, so, so that's where it starts, right. So they're not looking like traditional automation without looking at deposition rate, or I need to hit some Cycle Time to hit some volume commitments for some automotive supplier. They just can't find welders to make production. And so they reach out to us, they see something that looks very, very easy to use. And it's really a way to empower their welders. So it still takes the knowledge of that skilled welder, right, but now they're getting maybe a co worker that's more reliable than a co worker that shows up every day. And a co worker that lets that welder focus on things that only he can do the cobalt can't do everything. And so really allows them to take their their skill and put it into the robot, right and get that repeatability and reliability.

06:36

So what was interesting, because as a, as a former welder a long time ago, is one is the ability to say, Okay, I've got this, this tool, this, this ko bot that is helping me run this bead. But there's also rate, there's also, you know, the material that you're using the penetration. There's a lot of science that goes in on that. And is that all part of your solution? It's like, okay, what do you got here? Oh, we've got this stainless steel thing going on here. And this is that blah, blah, blah. And you put it all in? And it just says, Oh, I know what to do

07:14

so so I'll say yes or no, right? We still, we don't take anything away from that skilled welder. They know torch angles, they know how to contact him to work distance, they know parameters and settings, right. And so we really look at this as a tool to empower them, versus a tool to replace what they're doing. So it's not trying to figure stuff out that they can't do. But it's an easy to use tool. Think of it like a power drill, right? Like, it still takes that carpenter to put it in. But it's a lot easier and faster than you know, or that nail gun right, then they're doing it by hand.

07:44

And I would imagine there's some, it's a good solution for that. I hate to say it there it exists that mundane. For sure. You know, and you know, we've all been there, we're running a beat, we're trying to do it. And it's the same one over and over again. And after a while there's a there's a numbness that happens. Remove that use the skill of the the individual to focus in on something else. Yep. And then be able to leverage this solution for

08:13

sure like that. That welder does not look forward to doing that repeatable small little trinkets and things like that around the shop, because it keeps them around. That's for sure. It doesn't it doesn't. It's not interesting work or, you know, very repetitive and mundane. So it lends itself well to a Kobach. One of the things that that we see is that we really focus on making it fast to teach. I mean, you learned it very quickly. Oh, yeah, teach something.

08:38

I don't I'm not the sharpest tool in the show. You are? No, no, no.

08:42

No, I don't want to I'm humbled. Just ask me. But the faster you can make it to teach apart, the smaller batch size, people can run in production. So if it takes you an hour to program apart, you got to think I better get hours worth of production, to make it worth spending an hour to program it or a day or whatever. But when you can teach a part in minutes, minutes right now, you don't need to run for a long time to make it worthwhile. So we see customers running smaller and smaller batch sizes, 20 pieces, pieces, things they wouldn't do with traditional automation. What

09:15

do you see it going? I mean, what's up, put your future hat on? Saying that you've been around for seven years?

09:20

Yep. So I did that Matt? Was pretty quick. Oh, yeah. I'm like a calculator.

09:27

You know, we've still feel like cobalt welding is in it at its infancy. There's still a lot, right. A lot of people still doing things manually. But there's some other applications that we have our sights on. Today, we sell our product that you saw that you experience in the US, Canada and Australia. And we've got plans to take it to other regions as well. People are looking for easy to use solutions. And so, you know,

09:49

it was two buttons. It was two buttons to do. The math isn't hard. One, two. But that's that's really good and Again, it's only going to get better. It's only going to get more advanced, it's going to only get more helpful and insightful and just be able to do that. So with that said, Dr. Rob, somebody's saying, that's cool. Stop, man. How do I get a hold of Rob?

10:17

Come to us on our website, hirebotics.com We're on social media, pretty active LinkedIn, Instagram, reach out, we'd love to talk to you.

10:25

It is it's pretty cool technology. Rob, you were fantastic. Thanks for I love the tech. I love it. I'm gonna sort of anchor my, my my trainee, your future. It's bright. And Sparky. All right, we're gonna have all the contact information out on Industrial Talk for rod. So don't come to me and say you can't get a hold of me because it's all out there on Industrial Talk. Again, we're broadcasting from at FABTECH. It is a must attend event. Please put that on your calendar, you will not be disappointed. We're going to wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.

11:01

You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

11:07

How about that conversation at FABTECH. Before I forget, because I said it throughout the whole interview that is a must attend have that really enjoyed it. And you're walking around and you're seeing so many different technologies and the innovation and, and people and companies that have a real desire to try to make our lives easier and better and stronger, faster, and all that stuff. Rob is no exception. Higher robotics is the company and I gotta tell you, if you're if you haven't seen it, there's this technology sprint that I went to his booth and program, a wellbeing segment, right. And it is just your app, put it here at this angle, and then put it out another it is really quite fantastic. And as a past welder, or recovering welder, because I gotta tell you, I enjoyed welding quite a bit. This, this technology is spectacular. Reach out to rob, he's got a solution that will blow your mind. All right, building a platform, we want you to be a part of it. We want you to be engaged and be part of the the ever expanding ecosystem of problem solvers. You have a message to tell, you have something of value to give to the marketplace. And don't sell yourself short. Industrial Talk is here for you. And we're here for you because we all need to succeed no matter what it is. And that comes through education comes through collaboration, as well as innovation and figuring out how to deploy this technology. All right, be bold, be brave, daring greatly. I say it all the time. You could do that. Hang out with Robin, you'll change the world. Thank you very much for joining. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from FABTECH shortly so stay tuned.