What jumps out from our latest Equipment Purchasing Intentions Survey is the numbers of respondents planning to invest in automation and robotics for their fabricating and welding shops. PHOTO courtesy BLM.
The economy may or may not slow this year, but metal manufacturers intend to continue with their aggressive plans to invest in new machinery.
Our annual Equipment Purchasing Intentions Survey indicates almost three quarter (74%) are planning to continue investing in machinery for 2023 at the same or higher rate than the previous year.
But exactly which types of machinery are they most likely to purchase in 2023? Our Survey also looked into that. In our previous Inside the Numbers we examined the most popular investments on the chip side. Now we will look into the most popular investments for fabricating and welding equipment.
Welding equipment investments are the most popular choice, cited by 44.1% of respondents, followed by the 23.7% of respondents reporting plans to purchase sawing equipment. Third highest priority is punching machines/punch tooling, followed by bending and forming equipment (16.9% of respondents) and tube and pipe fabricating equipment (15.3% of respondents). All these investment plans are in line with the findings from previous surveys.
What jumps out for 2023, however, is the 22% of respondents who indicated plans to invest in automation and robotics for their fabricating and welding shops. (A similar importance attached to automation and robotics investments was found among machine shop owners, 23.6% of which planned to make those investments this year.)
It’s becoming increasingly clear that when Canadian metalworking shops – machine, fabricating, welding – are looking to innovate, they’re thinking to automate.
(To underscore how critical we think this development is, the August issue of Shop Metalworking Technology magazine will be a special issue completely dedicated – cover to cover – to the topic of Automation and Robotics. There will be additional information provided through a special edition of our SHOP TALK newsletter and on our website.)
READ NEXT:
