The Evaluation on Welding Qualities by Gun Press Force Patterns in the RSW (Resistance Spot Welding) Process using Servo Gun

서보건을 이용한 저항 점용접 공정에서의 가압력 패턴에 의한 용접품질 평가

The Resistance Spot Welding (RSW) has been considered as an inherently safe and reliable method far joining metals, and has been widely employed, especially in automobile body assembly shops, as a manufacturing process. In recent years, the requirement for more sophisticated quality control procedures has considerably grown in the mass production industries. The object of the application of servo control to spot welding gun is the improvement of quality control in the spot welding, one of conventional industrial areas. The important factors affecting welding qualities (shear strength, nuggest size, indentation depth) are welding current, welding time, and gun press force. Welding current and welding time are controlled by welding timer. But, the conventional welding guns using compressed air are out of control in changing gun press forces in welding process. In this paper, a servo gun welding system having a AC servo motor and a PC control system is presented. The main object of this paper is to estimate the influence of gun press force changes in the welding process (press time -> welding time -> hold time) to welding qualities, and to evaluate welding qualities in real time, by recognizing the patterns of gun press forces changed in the welding process and comparing with the standard patterns.