• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.71-77
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• 2007

Until now, many researches on laser-arc hybrid welding processes have been conducted mainly for high power CW laser and high direct current arc to weld the thick steel plates for shipbuilding. Recently, however the usage of thin steel plates, which tend to be deformed easily by thermal energy, is been increasing because of demand of light structure such as car body in the automobile industry. Accordingly, heat sources having relatively low heat input such as pulsed laser, dip-transfer DC GMA and pulsed GMA seem to be applied more increasingly and the study about those heat sources is needed more intensively. Any heat source mentioned above can not stand alone without weld defects at a relatively high welding speed for increasing the welding productivity. This is main reason to apply the hybrid welding process which uses pulsed laser and low-heat-input GMA heat sources simultaneously to weld the thin steel plate. In this study, parameters of pulsed laser and dip-transfer DC GMA welding are studied firstly through preliminary experiments, and then analyzed in the viewpoint of their physical phenomena. Before conducting the hybrid welding, a pulse control technique is developed based on the parallel port communication and Visual C++ 6.0. Owing to development of this technique, interactions of laser and arc pulses can be controlled consistently. Using the pulse control technique, the hybrid welding is conducted and then its interactive welding phenomenon is analyzed.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.27-35
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• 2015

Laser welding sector in the automotive industry has been widely recognized as one of the most important bonding processes, such as parts welding. Efforts to improve productivity and weld quality have been progressing steadily. In addition, laser welding is suitable for welding process that can produce high-quality welds suitable for flexible production and small quantity batch productions. In order to ensure the rigidity of the material, high strength material are applied to more than 1 GPa class body parts and automotive bumper beams. However, not only the situation is that the trend of domestic research, but also development is based on product molding considering freedom of shape where reinforcement is applied to meet the safety regulations and high-speed crash performance, despite the use of high strength materials. The tendency for heat-affected zone (HAZ) softening phenomenon common in areas of laser welded high tensile steel welding confirmed the occurrence of weld softening effect according to the process parameters. Based on this, range of process parameters could be selected for ensuring weld quality.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.60-69
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• 1990

Plasma arc cutting is a fusion cutting process in which a gas-constricted arc is employed to produce a high-temperature, high-velocity plasma jet on the workpiece. This process provides some advantages such as increased cutting velocity, excellent working accuracy and the ability to cut special materials (widely used stainless steels and Al-alloys, for example), when compared with iconventional oxyfuel gas cutting. From the view point of price and reliability of the power source, plasma arc cutting has also some distinct advantages over laser beam cutting. High-speed machines with NC or CNC systems are needed for the plasma arc or laser beam cutting process, while for oxyfuel gas cutting, low-speed machines with copying templates or optical-shape tracking sensors can be applied. The low price and high flexibility of the microprocessor arc contributing more and more the application of CNC system in the plasma arc cutting process, as in other manufacturing fields. From these points of view, a microprocessor-based plasma arc cutting system was developed by using a reference-pulse system, and its performance was tested. The interpolating routines were programmed in the assembly language for saving the memory volume and improving the compouting speed, which has an intimate relationship with the available cutting velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.270-278
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• 2009

Friction stir welding is a relatively new solid state joining process. A6061-T6 and A5052-H32 aluminium alloy has gathered wide acceptance in the fabrication of light weight structures requiring a high strength to weight ratio and good corrosion resistance. This friction stir process uses a non-consumable tool to generate frictional heat in the abutting surfaces. The welding parameters such as tool rotational speed, welding speed, etc., and tool pin profile play a major role in deciding FSP zone formation in A6061-T6 and A5052-H32 aluminium alloy. Three different tool pin profiles have been used to fabricate the dissimilar butt joints. The formation of friction stir processed zone has been analysed macroscopically. Tensile properties of the joints have been evaluated and correlated with the friction stir processed zone formation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.329-337
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• 2016

The demand for the eco-friendly vehicles is skyrocketing because of the increasing $CO_2$ emissions and global warming. In the industrial field, the battery process, a core part of an eco-friendly vehicle, is drawing increased attention; its weight lightening as well as high energy density are becoming increasingly important. In this study, pure Ni plates that were used as the battery pole plate were welded using the laser. The lab joint welding was conducted on ten pure Ni plates at a laser power of 1900 W and a feed speed of 2.8-3.4 m/min. As observed in the experiment, a faster feed speed reduced the bead width, but the laser did not penetrate all ten specimen plates. In addition, pores were trapped when protective gas was used, but they were not trapped when the welding was conducted in atmospheric condition.

• Transactions on Control, Automation and Systems Engineering
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.182-188
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• 2000

High-frequency electric resistance welding (HERW) technique is one of the most productive manufacturing method currently available for pipe and tube production because of its high welding speed. In this process, a heat input is controlled by skilled operators observing color and shape of bead but such a manual control can not provide reliability and stability required for manufacturing pipes of high grade quality because of a variety of bead shapes and noisy environment. In this paper, in an effort to provide reliable quality inspection, we propose a neural network-based method for classification of bead shape. The proposed method utilizes the structure of Kohonen network and is designed to learn the skill of the expert operators and to provide a good solution to classify bead shapes according to their welding conditions. This proposed method is implemented on the real pipe manufacturing process, and a series of experiments are performed to show its effectiveness.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.11-24
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• 2004

In automotive industry, light weight vehicle is one of issues because of the air pollution and the protection of environment. Therefore, automotive manufacturers have tried to apply light materials such as aluminum to car body. Aluminum welding using laser has some advantages high energy density and high productivity. It is very important to understand behavior of plasma and keyhole in order to improve weld quality and monitor the weld state. In this study, spectral analysis was carried out to verify the spectrum for plasma which is generated in laser welding of A 6000 aluminum alloy. Two photodiodes which cover the range of plasma wavelength was used to measure light emission during laser welding according to assist gas flow rate and welding speed. Analysis of relationship between sensor signals of welding variables and formation of keyhole and plasma is performed. To determine the level of significance, analysis of variation (ANOVA) was carried out.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Nowadays, the weight lightening of automotive is required as conserving the environment has become a major worldwide issue. To solve this issue, various researches for the use of light materials(Alalloy, Mgalloy)and ultra high strength steel as substitutes of the current structural material have been carried out. Application of laser stitch welding to the assembly of automotive produces improvement in strength, lightening of body, higher fuel efficiency, lower production cost as well as reduction in assemble line due to its fast welding speed, superior accessible and weld quality. This process overcomes the shortcomings of the current resistance spot welding such as high electricity consumption, electrode replacement, and economical, technical limitation in design and production method of automotives.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.36-38
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• 2007

The instability of the arc in the $CO_2$ arc welding affects the quality of the weld in the automotive industry. This paper evaluates the effects of the arc stability in $CO_2$ arc welding with respect to vertical welding positions. In this experiment, galva-annealed steel sheets(CA) were used as specimens, and these materials were welded by adopting new Cold Metal Transfer (CMT) process. For each sample, fillet joint welding trials were carried out using the same conditions. Each part of welding joints was welded with vertical-up, vertical-down position at $45^{\circ},\;90^{\circ}\;and\;135^{\circ}$ degrees. A high speed camera and a welding signal monitoring system were used for monitoring fluid-flow phenomena in weld pools and frequency measurements, respectively. Through this study, the welding position were found to be key factors mainly to influence the arc stability in $CO_2$ welding moreover and that the arc stability in the vertical-up welding position was observed to be more stable than the vertical-down welding position below $90^{\circ}$.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.176-180
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• 2002

During the last two decades the laser beam has progressed from a sophisticated laboratory apparatus to an adaptable and viable industrial tool. Especially, in its welding mode, the laser offers high travel speed, low distortion, and narrow fusion and heat-affected zones (HAZ). The principal obstacle to selection of a laser processing method in production is its relatively high equipment cost and the natural unwillingness of production supervision to try something new until it is thoroughly proven. The major objective of this work is focused on the combined features of gas tungsten arc and a low-power cold laser beam. Although high-power laser beams have been combined with the plasma from a gas tungsten arc (GTA) torch for use in welding as early as 1980, recent work at the Ohio State University has employed a low power laser beam to initiate, direct, and concentrate a gas tungsten arcs. In this work, the laser beam from a 7 watts carbon monoxide laser was combined with electrical discharges from a short-pulsed capacitive discharge GTA welding power supply. When the low power CO laser beam passes through a special composition shielding gas, the CO molecules in the gas absorbs the radiation, and ionizes through a process known as non-equilibrium, vibration-vibration pumping. The resulting laser-induced plasma (LIP) was positioned between various configurations of electrodes. The high-voltage impulse applied to the electrodes forced rapid electrical breakdown between the electrodes. Electrical discharges between tungsten electrodes and aluminum sheet specimens followed the ionized path provided by LIP. The result was well focused melted spots.