• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.79-88
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• 1996

For improvement in productivity and weld quality, weld seam tracking and welding parameter control are very essential in the welding of a structure which can not be cxactly fit-up due to mismatch, discontinous gap, deflection, etc.. In this study, an automatic weld seam tracking system is developed for I-butt joint structure, and the system consists of XYZ working table, vision sensor and user interface program. In the developed vision sensor system, an image projection algorithm for weld-line detection and an adaptive current control algorithm for gap variation were implemented. The user interface program developed in this study by basing on the objct oriented concept could provide very convenient way to utilize the tracking system with the pull-down menu driven structure. The developed system showed a good seam tracking and weld quality control capability corresponding to deflected weld lines and gap variations.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.243-251
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• 2015

In order to develop an automatic system for welding thin steel plates with curvature such as the corrugated membranes of an LNG storage tank, a rotating mechanism should be firstly designed for the torch to easily follow the weld seam with a constant distance and angle. In this study, a torch rotating mechanism consisting of three circular links, two square-type links and a torch link was proposed for automation of the welding process. A weld-seam tracking system with two axis slides and the proposed rotating mechanism was successfully simulated with a dynamic simulation software. A prototype tracking system was manufactured and a tracking test with the system was then carried out. The test results with tracking system showed that the rotating mechanism could be implemented and it was feasible to be used in automatic tracking of weld seam with curvature.

• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2013.12a
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• pp.73-80
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• 2013

From broad point of view, seam tracking has been one of main issues with respect to welding automation. Several attempts have been successful for seam tracking of fixed weaving width. As a solution of the seam tracking methods for varying groove width, the visual sensors such as CCD cameras have been adopted. Although the vision sensing techniques can achieve high accuracy, the weak point is that well-prepared vision sensor environment should be required to obtain high-quality visual measurements which can be easily affected by significant noises in industrial areas. This paper proposed an alternative seam tracking algorithm for narrow groove. A special measurement device for arc voltage, in this study, is developed to enhance the reliability of the measured welding signals. Based on the developed arc sensor algorithm, an automatic weld-width tracking algorithm is also proposed, which is able to predict the weld-position more accurately. The usefulness of the automatic weld-width tracking algorithm was well verified by applying it to gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW).

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-91
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• 1997

In this study, a magnetic sensor to make use of eddy current was developed to detect the weld seam of butt joint in the sheet metal arc welding. This system consist of the sensor device for detecting the weld line, the servo control device for driving the weld torch movement and the control unit. A signal processing was applied to smooth the output signal of the sensor. The weld joint was determined by using a 1st order differential method. To improve tracking accuracy of the system, moving average method which has an effect of proportional and weighted integral control was applied to a series of the weld joint positions obtained above. The weld line for tracking was generated by using data regeneration algorithm. Based on these results, each servo motor was controlled by pulse generator. From experimental results, it was revealed that this system has excellent detecting ability for weld line and seam tracking ability.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2001

For the horizontal fillet welding with one plate in a vertical position, there will be a higher tendency of weld metal falling down rather than for the butt-welding in flat position. Such phenomenon could bring about the overlap or deflection of weld pool, and consequently induce the poor mechanical strength of weldments. Therefore, a precise position control of welding torch in conjunction with the weld qualify plays an important role in welding robot applications. In the present study, an experimental method was proposed for deriving a mathematical model between the leg length and the welding conditions. Finally, an algorithm was proposed for weld seam tracking and improvement of the weld quality. The reliability of the proposed algorithm was evaluated through various experiments, which showed that the proposed algorithm can be very effective for tracking the weld line and simultaneously achieving the sound weld bead.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.68-76
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• 1998

A CCD camera with a laser stripe was applied to realized the automatic weld seam tracking. The 3-dimensional information obtained from the vision system made it possible to generate the weld torch path. The adaptive Hough transformation was used to extract laser stripes an to obtain specific weld points. It takes relatively long time to process image on-line control using the basic control using the basic Hough transformation, but it has a tendency of robustness over the noises such as spatter. For this reason, it was complemented with adaptive Hough transformation to have an on-line processing ability for scanning specific weld points. The dead zone, where the sensing of weld line is impossible, was eliminated by rotating the camera with its rotating axis centered at the weld torch. When weld lines were detected, the camera angle was controlled in order to get the minimum image data for sensing of weld lines. Consequently, the image processing time was reduced.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.119-133
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• 1998

To implement full automation in pipe welding, it si most important to develop special sensors and their related systems which act like human operator when detecting irregular groove conditions. In this study, an automatic pipe Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) system was proposed to full control pipe welding procedure with intelligent sensor systems. A five-axes manipulator was proposed for welding torch to automatically access to exact welding position when pipe size and welding angle were given. Pool status and torch position were measured by using a weld-pool image monitoring and processing technique in root-pass welding for weld seam tracking and weld pool control. To overcome the intensive arc light, pool image was captured at the instance of short circuit of welding power loop. Captured image was processed to determine weld pool shape. For weld seam tracking, the relative distance of a torch position from the pool center was calculated in the extracted pool shape to move torch just onto the groove center. To control penetration of root pas, gap was calculated in the extracted pool image, and then weld conditions were controlled for obtaining appropriate penetration. welding speed was determined with a fuzzy logic, and welding current and voltage were determined from a data base to correspond to the gap. For automatic fill-pass welding, the function of human operator of real time weld seam control can be substituted by a sensor system. In this study, an arc sensor system was proposed based on a fuzzy control logic. Using the proposed automatic system, root-pass welding of pipe which had gap variation was assured to be appropriately controlled in welding conditions and in torch position by showing sound welding result and good seam tracking capability. Fill-pass welding by the proposed system also showed very successful result by tracking along the offset welding line without any control of human operator.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.729-733
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• 1997

Due to the variety of disturbance, it is not ease to accomplish the in-process detection of weld line with non-contact sensor. To get around this difficulties problem develop an automatic seam tracking weld system, the reliable signal processing algorithm has been recommanded. In this research, laser displacement sensor is applied as a seam finder in the automatic tracking system. The sensor is controlled by a dc servo motor which is mounted at X-Y moving table. X-Y moving table manipulated by an ac servo motor controls the position and velocity of the welding torch. First, X-Y table moves to Y-axis to search the welding joint feature before starting the welding, and welding joint is from the scanning data and weighting factor for each other. Second, weld line is determined using proposed signal processing algorithm during welding process. Form the experimental results, we could see the possibility that laser displacement sensor with procesed algorithm can be used as a seam finder in welding process under the severe noise (spatter,arc light etc.) condition

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.55-63
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• 1998

Among the position sensing methods available, the arc sensor which utilizes the electrical signal obtained from the welding arc itself is one of the most prevalently used methods, because it has an advantage that no particular sensing device is necessary and real-time sensing of a groove position is possible directly under the arc. The authors have already developed a seam tracking system that contains a new arc sensor algorithm, which uses the relative welding current variation according to the tip-to-workpiece distance in GMA welding. In this study a torch height control algorithm for automatic weld seam tracking was proposed for completing the previous system, which uses an on-off control technique. To implement the torch height control algorithm during weld seam tracking the system parameters which include 2nd averaging range, weighting factor for 2nd moving averaging, and Z-directional basic compensation distance were determined by experimental analysis. Finally the two different height control methods, one is simple on-off control and the other on-off control using a reference current value , were compared in their tracking abilities.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.122-131
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• 1995

An automatic welding equipment for thick plates requires the capability of the seam tracking of the weld line which often includes misalignment of the workpiece and variation of groove width. In this study, an automatic welding equipment and control algorithms based on the arc sensor were proposed for the GMA welding of thick plates which had misalignment and gap variation. The developed system being constituted with 5 axis can be automatically controlled by computer and also automnatically set the welding conditions such as welding current, and voltage. The proposed algorithms for the seam tracking in multi-pass welding of the thick plates were constituted as follows : the detection of weaving-end point for findng the variation of groove width, the control of welding velocity for acquiring a constant thickness deposition of weld metal, and the calculation of groove width and height of an arbitrary pass in the multi-pass weld. As results of the application of the system, it was revealed that the system had a good capability in seam tracking and made an excellent weld quality in V groove butt joint.