Development of a Intelligent Welding Carriage for Automation of Curved Block

This paper presents a novel Intelligent-Welding-Carriage (IWC) for automation of curved block in shipbuilding. The curved block is usually used in both front and back side of the ship. In curved block root gap is big, $1{\sim}7$ [mm] and inclination, $0{\sim}30$ [deg]. Since available conventional carriage type is limited to use below root gap of 3 [mm], only manual welding is employed in curved block. To adopt an IWC in curved block, it requires control of the welding conditions, i.e., voltage, current and travel speed, with respect to root gap and inclination to achieve good welding quality. In this paper, an IWC is developed for automization of welding operation to accommodate gap and inclination. Kinematics model and dynamics using Lagrangian formulation of the manipulator is introduced. IWC utilizes a database to perform accurate welding. The database is programmed based on numerous experimental test results with respect to gap, inclination, material, travel speed, weaving condition, voltage, and current. Finally, experimental result using PID control is addressed for verify the trajectory tracking accuracy of end-effector.