• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.71-78
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• 1999

The welded metal bellows is commonly manufactured by welding pairs of washer-shaped discs of thin sheet metal stamped from strip stock in thickness from 0.025 to 0.254 mm. The discs, or diaphragms, are formed with mating circumferential corrugations. In this study, the diaphragms were welded by using a CW Nd: YAG laser to form metal bellows. The bellows was fixed on a jig and compressed axially, while Cu-rings were installed between belows edges for intimate contact of edges. The difference between the inner diameter of bellows and jig shaft causes an eccentricity, while the tolerance between motor shaft and jig shaft causes a wobble type motion. A vision sensor which is based on the optical triangulation was used for seam tracking. An image processing algorithm which can distinguish the image by bellows edge from that by Cu-ring was developed. The geometric relationship which describes the eccentricity and wobble type motion was modeled. The seam tracking using the image processing algorithm and the geometric modeling was performed successfully.