• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.102-110
• /
• 1998

The horizontal fillet welding is prevalently used in heavy and ship building industries to fabricate the large scale structures. A deep understanding of the horizontal fillet welding process is restricted, because the phenomena occurring in welding are very complex and highly non-linear characteristics. To achieve the satisfactory weld bead geometry in robot welding system, the seam tracking algorithm should be reliable. The number of seam tracker was developed for arc welding automation by now. Among these seam tracker, the arc sensor is prevalently used in industrial robot welding system because of its low cost and flexibility. However, the accuracy of arc sensor would be decreased due to the electrical noise and metal transfer. In this study, the signal processing algorithm based on the neural network was implemented to enhance the reliability of measured welding current signals. Moreover, the seam tracking algorithm in conjunction with the signal processing algorithm was implemented to trace the center of weld line. It was revealed that the neural network could be effectively used to predict the welding current signal at the end of weaving.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
• /
• 1996.10a
• /
• pp.139-141
• /
• 1996

Among various welding parameters, the welding current which is inversely proportional to the tip-to-workpiece distance in GMAW is an essential parameter to monitor the GMAW process of horizontal fillet joints. For the case of weld defect such as overlap in horizontal fillet welding, therefore, the signal processing for process monitoring or automatic seam tracking should be modified by considering the weld pool surface geometry including the corresponding weld defect. In other words, the adequate signal processing algorithm is indispensible to improve the performance of the arc sensor. However, arc sensor algorithm already developed usually focus on weld seam tracing but do not considering the weld qualities. In this paper, various experiments were carried out to investigate the tendencies of the weld defects when weaving motion is added, and the experimental method based on 2$^n$ factorial design was proposed for deriving the mathematical model between the leg length and the various welding conditions. Moreover, a signal processing method based on the artificial neural network(Adaptive Resonance Theory) was proposed far discriminating the current signal of sound weld beads from that of weld beads with overlap. Finally, the algorithm for weld seam tracking combined with the mathematical modeling and the signal processing method was carried out to track the weld line in conjunction with the improvement of the weld qualities. The reliability of the proposed algorithms were evaluated through various experiments, which showed that the proposed algorithms could be effectively used for arc welding automation.