• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제18권4호
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• pp.70-75
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• 2000

The weld seam tracking system for arc welding process uses various kinds of sensors such as arc sensor, vision sensor, laser displacement and so on. Among the variety of sensors available, electro-magnetic sensor is one of the most useful methods especially in sheet metal butt-joint arc welding, primarily because it is hardly affected by the intense arc light and fume generated during the welding process, and also by the surface condition of weldments. In this study, a dual-electromagnetic sensor, which utilizes the induced current variation in the sensing coil due to the eddy current variation of the metal near the sensor, was developed for arc welding of sheet metal butt-joints. The dual-electromagnetic sensor thus detects the offset displacement of weld line from the center of sensor head even though there's no clearance in the joint. A set of design variables of the sensor were determined for the maximum sensing capability through the repeated experiments. Seam tracking is performed by correcting the position of sensor to the amount of offset displacement every sampling period. From the experimental results, the developed sensor showed the excellent capability of weld seam detection when the sensor to workpiece distance is near less than 5 mm, and it was revealed that the system has excellent seam tracking ability for the butt-joint of sheet metal.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.70-78
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• 1990

The harsh nature of welding environments makes welding a prime candidate for process automation. Among the variety of welding processes available, gas metal arc welding is one of the most frequently used methods, primarily because it is highly suited to a wide range of applications, and also to automation. Automatic seam tracking method is one of the most demanded techniques for automatic control of arc welding. In this study a seam tracking system has been developed by using the welding arc itself as a sensor. This paper described the principle and experimental result of the arc sensor system, as well as the development and application of the automatic CO_2$ welding for the horizontal fillet welding. A basic problem in horizontal fillet welding is the prevention of hanging bead formation such as undercut at the vertical plate and overlap at the horizontal plate. To produce the symmetric bead shape, the relationship of bead shape to welding parameters(welding velocity, weaving width, weaving speed, tip to workpiece distance) was also investigated.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 1996년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.680-684
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• 1996

Welding systems cannot adapt to changes in the joint geometry which may occur due to a variety of reason. Automatic seam tracking technigue is essential to adjust the welding torch position in real time as it moves along the seam. Automatic tracking system must keep the welding speed constant unrelation to the change of the welding path. Therefore, the information from the laser displacement sensor must be converted into the input to operate the X-Y table and to rotate the desired torch position by proposed algorithm. In this research, laser displacement sensor is used as a seam finder in the automatic tracking system. X-Y moving table manipulated by ac servo motor controls the position and velocity of the torch-and-sensor part. DC motor controls the position and velocity of the torch. X-Y table controls the position of sensor and relative position of torch is controlled by dc motor which is mounted at sensor-and-torch part. Sensor is always ahead of torch to preview the weld line. From the experimental results, we could see the possiblity that the laser displacement sensor can be used as a seam finder in welding process and that the seam tracking system controlled by proposed algorithm is well done.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 1995년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.1105-1109
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• 1995

A CCD-camera, which is structured with vision system, was used to realize automatic seam-tracking system and 3-D information which is needed to generate torch path, was obtained by using laser-slip beam. To extract laser strip and obtain welding-specific point, Adaptive Hough-transformation was used. Although the basic Hough transformation takes too much time to process image on line, it has a tendency to be robust to the noises as like spatter. For that reson, it was complemented with Adaptive Hough transformation to have an on-line processing ability for scanning a welding-specific point. the dead zone,where the sensing of weld line is impossible, is eliminated by rotating the camera with its rotating axis centered at welding torch. The camera angle is controlled so as to get the minimum image data for the sensing of weld line, hence the image processing time is reduced. The fuzzy controller is adapted to control the camera angle.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제23권7호
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• pp.59-66
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• 2006

In laser welding, automatic seam tracking is important to adjust the laser head position in real time as it moves along the seam. Also if the joint gap is occurred, filling the missing material into the joint gap is necessary to prevent welding defects and bad welding quality. In general, the joint gap width is not constant along the seam due to a variety of reason. So it is essential to control the filler wire speed into the joint gap to acquire good welding quality. This paper describes an intelligent filler wire feeding device which can control 3-dimensional seam tracking and the filler wire speed by measuring the gap position and the joint gap width in laser welding. We call this device as Smart Micro Control system(SMC). To achieve this objective, we assessed weld quality in 2mm sheets of A16061 which had various gap width by using the developed device. From the experimental results, It was found the possibility that the developed device could be used in welding various 3-dimensional structures.

• 대한용접접합학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한용접접합학회 1999년도 특별강연 및 추계학술발표대회 개요집
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• pp.51-54
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• 1999

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제17권6호
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• pp.90-99
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• 1999

Significant portion of the total manufacturing time for a pipe fabrication process is spent on the welding following primary machining and fit-up processes. To achieve a reliable weld bead appearance, automatic seam tracking and adaptive control to fill the groove are urgently needed. For the seam tracking in welding processes, the vision sensors have been successfully applied. However, the adaptive filling control of the multi-torches system for the appropriate welded area has not been implemented in the area of SAW(submerged arc welding) by now. The term adaptive control is often used to describe recent advances in welding process control by strictly this only applies to a system which is able to cope with dynamic changes in system performance. In welding applications, the term adaptive control may not imply the conventional control theory definition but may be used in the more descriptive sense to explain the need for the process to adapt to the changing welding conditions. This paper proposed various types of methodologies for obtaining a good bead appearance based on multi-torches welding system with the vision system in SAW. The methodologies for adaptive filling control used welding current/voltage, arc voltage/welding current/wire feed speed combination and welding speed by using vision sensor. It was shown that the algorithm for welding current/voltage combination and welding speed revealed sound weld bead appearance compared with that of voltage/current combination.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• 제1권1호
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• pp.23-30
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• 2001

Among the various welding conditions, the welding current that is inversely proportional to the tip-to-work-piece distance is an essential parameter as to monitor the GMAW process and to implement the welding automation. Considering the weld pool surface geometry including weld defects, it should modify the signal processing method for automatic seam tracking in horizontal fillet welding. To meet the above necessities, a mathematical model related with the weld pool geometry was proposed as in a conjunction with the two-dimensional heat flow analysis of the horizontal fillet welding. The signal processing method based on the artificial neural network (Adaptive Resonance Theory) was proposed for discriminating the sound weld pool surface from that with the weld defects. The reliability of the numerical model and the signal processing method proposed were evaluated through the experiments of which showed that they are effective for predicting the weld bead shape with or without the weld defects in a horizontal fillet welding.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제24권10호
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• pp.64-74
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• 2007

Because of the size and environment in the shipbuilding process, the portable type robot is required for the automatic seam tracking. For this reason, the structure of laser sensor should be considered in the initial design step and the coordinate transformation between welding robot and laser sensor, which is joint finder, must be identified exactly and the real time tracking algorithm based on these consideration could be developed. In this research, laser displacement sensor in which its structure is laser beam's vertical projection, is developed to recognize the location of weld joint. In practical applications, however, images of weld joints are often degraded because of the surface specularity or spatter. To overcome the problem, the constrained joint finding algorithm is proposed. In the approach of coordinate conversion rule for the visual feedback control among welding torch, robot body and laser sensor is applied by the same reference point method. In the real time seam tracking algorithms we propose constrained sampling method which uses look ahead distance. The RLS(Recursive Least Square) filter is applied to obtain the smooth tracking path from the sensitive edge data. From the experimental results, we could see the possibility that the developed laser sensor with proposed processing algorithm and real time seam tracking method can be used as a welding under the shipbuilding condition.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제19권6호
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• pp.600-607
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• 2001

A CCD camera with a laser stripe was applied to realize the automatic weld seam tracking in GMAW. It takes relatively long time to process image on-line control using the basic Hough transformation, but it has a tendency of robustness over the noises such as spatter and arc light. For this reason. it was complemented with adaptive Hough transformation to have an on-line processing ability for scanning specific weld points. The adaptive Hough transformation was used to extract laser stripes and to obtain specific weld points. The 3-dimensional information obtained from the vision system made it possible to generate the weld torch path and to obtain the information such as width and depth of weld line. We controled the wire feeding rate using informations of weld line.