History
History of Welding Business
The arc welding process was first employed in Japan in 1914; though covered electrodes were mostly imported, leading shipyards and machinery fabricators were able to produce them for their own uses. Even Kobe Steel produced its own covered electrodes in-house. However, because of the poor quality of domestic welding consumables at that time, only imported consumables were specified for building heavy-duty ships. Later on, it became difficult to import industrial goods from overseas on account of deteriorating international trade. To overcome this problem, Kobe Steel was directed by the government to establish a self-support production framework in 1939. In response, Kobe Steel launched a project to research the production process and welding consumables and, in 1942, developed a high-quality covered electrode, known as “B-17.” Since then “B-17” has proven to be an excellent electrode in terms of quality as well as versatility and has been used extensively.
The production of welding consumables increased in tandem with Japan's postwar reconstruction and economic growth, and, in 1959, the Welding Business became independent from the Iron and Steel Business. Two factories were constructed in 1961 to respond to customer needs for a variety of welding consumables including solid wires, welding fluxes, and flux-cored wires. With the addition of new product lines, the factories were expanded, abolished, or merged for higher production efficiency in 1970 and 1975. Today, the Welding Business' production base is comprised of four plants in Japan.
In the meantime, the impetus for improving welding efficiency emerged from within the shipbuilding industries. To meet such requirements, Kobe Steel developed the one-sided submerged arc welding processes in 1964, which were given the names FCB and RF. With these epoch-making processes, granular backing flux is applied by pressure on the backside of the groove of a steel joint, and groove welding is carried out only from the face side of the groove to form a single melt-through weld with a good root surface. Almost all Japanese shipbuilders, who were then in their prime, employed the FCB and RF processes. Nowadays these processes are given an active role in Korean and Chinese shipbuilders, too.
Kobe Steel has also been developing and supplying high efficiency welding equipment. In 1979, it manufactured the 1st oil-pressure-driven arc welding robot, "ARCMAN." The year 1980 has been called "the first year of the robot," because robotization started with a variety of robots in Japan. Later on, Kobe Steel started to develop electric-motor-driven arc welding robots and, in 1982, successfully supplied the "ARCMAN-S" series, which offered highly improved workability for medium/thick steel plates.
Another series, the "ARCMAN-VX" was first supplied in 1987 and was supported by many Japanese users. Since then it has stood out as the main product line in a diffusion of arc welding robots for as long as 13 years. In 1985, Kobe Steel launched a welding power source, the SENSARC series, which was characterized by robust design and consistent performance in the use with welding robots; particularly when used in combination with ARCMAN robots, its high uptime has an excellent reputation in such industrial fields as steel frame structures and construction machinery. The combination of ARCMAN robot and SENSARC power source has earned itself a major position in Japan and is expanding its application arena overseas including China.
Overseas Operations
In addition to increasing production capacity through construction of new factories to meet domestic demand in Japan, production and sales bases for covered electrodes were also established overseas, in the following sequence to respond to local demand in Southeast Asian countries: Thailand in 1968, Singapore in 1979, and Malaysia in 1995. Taking into account the growing trend in semiautomatic welding, a factory to produce solid wires was also set up in Thailand in 1988. On the other hand, the high consumption ratio of flux-cored wires in Europe and the USA spurred Kobe Steel to open a sales office in the USA in 1990 as well as another factory and sales office in The Netherlands in 1994 to shift the import of flux-cored wires to local production in Europe.
Meanwhile in East Asia, with the rapid growth of the Korean shipbuilding industry and the booming Chinese economy, Kobe Steel expanded its business field by setting up new overseas bases as follows: the flux-cored wires production facility for supplying shipbuilders in Korea in 1995; production and sales bases for solid wires and flux-cored wires in China in 2002 and 2008, respectively; in 2010, the pan-China sales management base to respond to the sharply increasing demands for welding robots; and sales bases for general markets in Korea and India in 2011.
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