Walk into a fabrication shop today and you might see something that would've seemed impossible five years ago: a welder setting up a collaborative robot with a tablet, then moving on to another job while  the cobot runs production overnight.

It's not a novelty anymore. It's becoming standard practice.

The global collaborative robot market was valued at $2.14 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $11.64 billion by 2030, growing at 31.6% annually. And welding is leading that growth—the welding application segment is expected to contribute 42.7% of overall collaborative robot market revenue by 2025. 

This isn't about futuristic technology trickling down to small shops. This is about fabricators—especially those doing precision work for data centers, infrastructure, and heavy equipment—realizing that collaborative welding systems have become practical, accessible, and in many cases, essential to staying competitive.

The shift that's already happened

Five years ago, welding automation meant one thing: large industrial robots in cages, programmed by specialists, dedicated to high-volume production runs. If you didn't have a robotics engineer on staff and weren't running thousands of identical parts, automation wasn't for you.

That's changed.

Over 65% of modern factories have implemented cobots for tasks like pick-and-place, welding, and quality inspection, with 48% of small and medium enterprise automation systems now integrating cobots. These aren't massive operations. These are shops with 10-50 people who figured out that collaborative systems could multiply their welding capacity without requiring them to become robotics experts.

Fabricators are adopting cobots as flexible, smart tools that exemplify a new kind of automation in metal shops, taking the "automation-as-a-tool" approach where operators stay in the loop. The key word there is "tool." Shops aren't restructuring their entire operations around automation—they're adding cobots the same way they'd add a new welding station or CNC machine.

Why data center fabrication specifically

Data center work sits at the intersection of everything that makes collaborative welding systems effective: tight tolerances, AWS-certified requirements, high-volume identical components, and aggressive timelines.

Projects require certified welders and dedicated certified welding inspectors to meet quality expectations that exceed industry standards. That level of precision used to mean tying up your best welder for weeks on repetitive production. Now shops are programming those jobs once, getting them certified, then letting the cobot handle production while experienced welders move to complex work.

One fire truck equipment manufacturer uses cobots to create thousands of tack welds for fan shroud components—100 units per week equating to about 14,000 tack trigger pulls, which freed the company's welders to work on large fire trucks that require myriad out-of-position welds. That's the pattern you see across data center fabrication: cobots handling the boring, repetitive, high-volume production that doesn't require judgment, while skilled welders focus on work that actually needs their expertise.

The economics make sense. Modular data center construction time is reduced by 40% compared to traditional builds, with cost savings of 25-30%. Those speed advantages only work if suppliers can keep up. Fabricators using collaborative systems can scale production volume to match contractor timelines without adding headcount they can't find.

What changed to make this practical

The technology itself got dramatically simpler.

Five to seven years ago, robots were too complex for many customers, requiring too much knowledge and expertise to run, but the industry has evolved new ways of interfacing operators with robots that are now trickling down to small shops. Programming used to require specialized training and hours of setup time. Now welders are using tablets and simplified interfaces that let them teach the cobot a weld path in minutes.

Cobots allow shops to bring the robot to the work rather than the other way around, with portability that creates opportunities to deploy automation quickly on large weldments and heavy equipment. A New Mexico agricultural equipment manufacturer discovered it's much easier to bring a cart-based cobot to large parts than to move the parts around. Shipbuilders are magnetically mounting cobots to metal surfaces for inside-block welding that previously required manual work in cramped locations.

The barrier to entry dropped. More shops are renting cobots to test whether they fit their operations, allowing them to try automation without committing to ownership, and return rented cobots if the technology doesn't fit or the product mix changes. That rental model removed the biggest risk: spending six figures on equipment that sits unused because it didn't work for your application.

The workforce reality driving adoption

This isn't just about technology getting better. It's about labor markets getting worse.
Roughly 400,000 skilled trade jobs are unfilled in America, with that number potentially hitting close to 2 million by 2033. The industry needs 330,000 new welding professionals by 2028, with an average of 82,500 welding positions to be filled annually. And just 2.7% of 2022 welder jobs are likely to be considered "job keepers" over the next decade, attributed to both churn and retirement. 
You can't hire your way out of that math. Shops that are growing—or even just maintaining current production levels—need to figure out how to accomplish more with the welders they have.

Workers are relieved from monotonous or physically demanding tasks, allowing them to focus on using their experience to set up jobs and ensure quality, leading to increased job satisfaction and reduced turnover. That's not spin. Talk to fabricators who deployed cobots and they'll tell you the same thing: experienced welders prefer setting up programs and supervising production over running the same bead 400 times.

What adoption actually looks like

The shops successfully using collaborative welding systems didn't overhaul their operations. They started with one application—usually the most boring, repetitive work—and expanded from there.

Some fabricators have welders set up a cobot and then work on another manual welding application alongside it, with programmers able to fixture a piece, use a simplified interface to teach the robot, then let the cobot produce while they leave workpiece fixturing and removal to a material handler. The welder becomes more productive because they're using their full skill set rather than being trapped on one repetitive task.

A small custom metal fabrication shop in Sheffield invested in a Universal Robots UR5e to handle repetitive welding tasks, ensuring consistent quality and freeing up experienced welders to focus on complex, intricate jobs, which boosted their capacity and reduced lead times. That's the standard playbook: identify the high-volume repetitive work, automate it, redeploy skilled welders to higher-value tasks.

The portability matters too. Cobots mounted on movable magnetic rails can crawl along gigantic flat or curved workpieces performing welds, and can even handle heavy-duty multipass jobs on large weldments. For data center fabricators working on large cooling skids or structural frames, that flexibility means automation can follow the work rather than requiring dedicated floor space.

The market momentum

The adoption curve is steep. Automotive and metalworking facilities account for 43% of cobot installations, with 48% of automotive manufacturers in North America employing collaborative robots for painting, welding, and inspection processes.

But it's not just automotive anymore. Cobot welding is revolutionizing metal fabrication across heavy machinery, transportation, infrastructure, and metalworking industries, with businesses leveraging cobots to increase efficiency, maintain high-quality welds, and address labor shortages.

Data center contractors are seeing the same pattern among their supplier base. The fabricators consistently hitting delivery windows and quality specs are increasingly the ones using collaborative systems to handle production volume. The shops still relying entirely on manual welding are the ones turning down large orders or missing deadlines.

The American Welding Society estimates the average age of a welder to be 54 years old, with a potential shortage of 360,000 welders by 2027. Meanwhile, an estimated 10 gigawatts of data center capacity is projected to break ground globally in 2025 alone. Every one of those facilities needs precision metalwork.

The fabricators positioning themselves to capture that work are the ones solving the capacity problem now—not waiting for the labor shortage to magically resolve itself.

What's driving the economics

The ROI calculus shifted dramatically. Cobots' ability to work alongside humans enhances safety and productivity, with small and medium-sized enterprises increasingly adopting automation as costs decrease and flexibility increases.

A typical collaborative welding system for data center fabrication runs $95K-140K fully integrated. Systems at this price point include full plug-and-produce integration, shipping, 2-year warranty, lifetime software license, and often a 30-day return policy. That's expensive, but it's not the $300K+ industrial robot cell it would've been five years ago.

The payback math is straightforward: if a cobot can run production overnight and weekends while your skilled welder handles complex work during the day, you're effectively getting 2-3 welders' output from one person. For shops doing data center fabrication where contracts routinely exceed $400K, that capacity increase pays for itself in months, not years.

By delegating repetitive or high-risk tasks to cobots, SMEs can significantly improve workplace safety, with cobots equipped with advanced sensors that detect and respond to human presence. That safety advantage matters when you're dealing with AWS-certified work where a single injury can shut down production and tank your contractor relationship.

The adoption pattern

Here's what the data shows about how shops are actually implementing this:

The up to 5kg payload segment dominated the collaborative robot market with the largest share in 2024, driven by adoption in electronics, automotive, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals for tasks like packaging, pick-and-place, assembly, and handling of small parts. But the above 10kg segment is expected to expand at the highest rate, attributed to increasing demand for cobots in human-intensive tasks like loading and unloading of heavy components.

Translation: shops started with lighter-duty applications to learn the technology, then expanded to heavier work as they got comfortable. That de-risked adoption pattern is why you're seeing rapid growth—fabricators aren't betting the business on unproven technology, they're starting small and scaling based on results.

Mobile collaborative robots are likely to bring in new trends in the market, with rapid expansion in the manufacturing industry driving demand for collaborative robots globally. The next wave isn't just more cobots—it's more flexible deployment models that let fabricators move automation around their shop as production needs change.

What this means for the industry

The collaborative welding trend isn't reversing. The collaborative robot market is projected to exhibit a 36.47% CAGR from 2025-2033, driven by advancements in automation, increasing demand for flexible manufacturing solutions, and cost reduction in industrial processes.

For data center fabricators, that acceleration matters because contractors are increasingly expecting supplier capacity that only automation can deliver. When your competitor can quote an 8-week lead time on 1,000 units while you're stuck at 14 weeks, you're not winning the bid—regardless of quality reputation.

Shops of all sizes are looking to boost quality and productivity without necessarily having to hire additional welders, with automated systems becoming all but a necessity as the pool of skilled employees continues to wane. The fabricators treating collaborative welding as optional rather than inevitable are the ones that'll be explaining to contractors why they can't scale production to match order volumes.

The data is clear: this isn't early adoption anymore. It's market transition. The shops installing collaborative welding systems today aren't bold innovators—they're pragmatists who did the math and realized that solving the capacity problem now positions them to capture the data center work that's already in the pipeline.

The bottom line

Collaborative welding robots moved from novel technology to industry standard faster than most people expected. The global collaborative robot market is projected to grow from $3.06 billion in 2025 to $15.15 billion by 2033, with welding applications leading that growth.

For data center fabricators, the question isn't whether collaborative systems will become common—they already are. The question is whether your shop is positioned to compete as the market shifts toward suppliers who solved the capacity problem.

The fabricators winning larger contracts and hitting aggressive timelines aren't necessarily the ones with the most welders. They're the ones who figured out how to multiply what their existing welders can accomplish.

That's not speculation. That's what the adoption data shows, and it's what data center contractors are seeing across their supplier base.

Is your shop keeping pace with industry adoption?

Collaborative welding systems have moved from emerging technology to competitive necessity in data center fabrication. The shops scaling their capacity aren't waiting for the labor shortage to resolve—they're using cobots to multiply their existing welders' output.

Hirebotics builds collaborative welding and cutting systems designed specifically for fabrication shops—combining Universal Robots cobots with our cloud-connected Beacon platform that makes programming simple enough for welders to learn in hours, not weeks.

Want to see how collaborative welding is becoming standard in data center fabrication?

Visit Hirebotics to explore how shops like yours are using cobots to scale production without scaling headcount.

The market is shifting. The question is whether you're shifting with it.