• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.45-51
• /
• 2002

In the multi-pass welding of pressure vessels or ships, the mechanical touch sensor system is generally used together with a manipulator to measure the gap and depth of the narrow gap to perform seam tracking. Unfortunately, such mechanical touch sensors may commit measuring errors caused by the deterioration of the measuring device. An automation system of narrow gap multi-pass welding using a laser vision system which can track the seam line of narrow gap and which can control welding power has been developed. The joint profile of the narrow gap, with 250mm depth and 28mm width, can be captured by laser vision camera. The image is then processed for defining tracking positions of the torch during welding. Then, the real-time correction of lateral and vertical position of the torch can be done by the laser vision system. The adaptive control of welding conditions like welding currents and welding speeds, can also be performed by the laser vision system, which cannot be done by conventional mechanical touch systems. The developed automation system will be adopted to reduce the idle time of welders, which happens frequently in conventional long welding processes, and to improve the reliability of the weld quality as well.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.36-41
• /
• 2010

High Mn steel has been developed for automotive applications since the steel has an excellent combination of strength and ductility. However, from the viewpoint of welding, high Mn steel has a few problems related to its chemical composition. This paper describes characteristics of dissimilar $CO_2$ laser welding for expanding application of high Mn steel. From this work it was cleared that dissimilar laser welded joint between high Mn steel and carbon steel had poor formability due to the formation of martensite within weld metal. In order to improve ductility of welded joint, the method of controlling the dilution ratio of high Mn steel was suggested.

• Proceedings of the Korea Committee for Ocean Resources and Engineering Conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.274-278
• /
• 2003

In recent, an application of high energy density beam we/ding is increasing to obtain the high quality in weldments. Laser welding, especially, has been recognized as an useful method and its beam power has also increased according to the development of relevant technology. However, welding method in the fields of power plant is conservative because their structures have required to endure high temperature and pressure. So, authors conduct the numerical simulation in order to consider the possibility of laser welding on the material of the pressure vessels ($2\frac{1}{4}Cr-1Mo$ steel). As a result of this study, we can confirm the advantages of laser welding and obtain useful information for the experiments of weldability.

• Laser Solutions
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.53-61
• /
• 2000

On the laser weld production line, a slight alteration of the welding condition produces many defects. The defects are monitored in real time, in order to prevent continuous occurrence of defects, reduce the loss of material, and guarantee good quality. The measurement system is produced by using three photo-diodes for detection of the plasma and spatter signal in CO$_2$ laser welding. For high speed CO$_2$ laser welding, laser tailored welded blanks for example, on-line weld quality monitoring system was developed by using fuzzy multi-feature pattern recognition. Weld qualities were classified optimal heat input, a little low heat input, low heat input, and focus misalignment, and final weld quality were classified good and bad.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.28 no.5
• /
• pp.75-79
• /
• 2010

The Remote welding system(RWS) using $CO_2$ laser equipment has focusable distance of laser beam longer than 800 mm from workpiece and can deflect the laser beam by the scanner mirrors very rapidly. In the case of normal welding system based on robot, there is a limit to move the shortest path in short time and this causes interference between robot and workpiece. On the other hand, RWS is the optimized equipment to get big merits with advanced sequence of welding and short cycle time. However, there is still a pending task such as the control of plasma in the welding process of thick sheets therefore, it requires high power laser beam because of the absence of assist gas equipment in itself. In this study, high-tensile steel plates were overlap welded with $CO_2$ RWS for the production of car body and the influence of penetration depth according to the existence of assist gas was analyzed. Excellent tensile strength with enough width of molten zone independent to penetration depth was observed under welding condition with 3.6 kW laser power and 2.8 m/min welding speed without assist gas. Finally, the proto-type automotive parts were produced by applying the deduced optimal welding condition.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.71-78
• /
• 2006

It has been reported that good quality weld beads are not easily obtained during the $CO_2$ CW laser welding of primer coated plate. However, by introducing a small gap clearance in the lap position, the zinc vapor can escape through it and sound weld beads can be acquired. Therefore, this study examines for keyhole behavior by observing the laser-induced plasma and investigates the relation between keyhole behavior and formation of weld defect. Laser-induced plasma has accompanied with the vaporizing pressure of zinc ejecting from keyhole to surface of primer coated plate. This dynamic behavior of plasma was very unstable and this instability was closely related to the unstable motion of keyhole during laser welding. As a result of observing the composition of porosity, much of Zn element was found from inner surface of porosity. But Zn was not found from the dimple structure fractured at the weld metal. By analyzing of vaporizing element in laser welding, a component ratio of Zn was decreased by introducing a small gap clearance. Therefore we can prove that the major cause of porosity is the vaporization of primer in lap position. Mechanism of porosity-formation is that the primer vaporized from the lap position accelerates dynamic behavior of the key hole and the bubble separated from the key hole is trapped in the solidification boundary and romaines as porosity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Laser Processing Conference
• /
• 2006.11a
• /
• pp.17-20
• /
• 2006

In the remote welding system using $CO_2$ laser, laser beam is rapidly deflected by moving mirrors of scanner system and has focusable distance over 1000mm from workpiece. From such arrangement, various advantages and disadvantages arise. Remote welding is a highly efficient laser process. As the mirrors of the scanner system allow positioning speeds exceeding 700m/s, it becomes possible to reduce the welding cycle time. On the other hand, as there no the provision of shielding gas which is normally required for beam powers exceeding 3kW, may become difficult task. Therefore, In this study, the influence of the various penetration of back bead by the different laser welding speed on the weld seam formation without shielding gas was investigated.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.19-24
• /
• 2004

The laser welding and its analysis of thin-sheet carbon steels were carried out with high power $CO_{2}$ laser. The main factor of weld quality of laser welding is gap and edge quality. This work was preformed to focus on the gap tolerance problem during laser welding. First, bead on plate welding of thin sheet was examined to investigate the effect of laser welding variables, and to obtain optimum welding condition. Butt welding was also carried out to show the effect of gap on the laser weldability of thin sheet. In order to investigate the effect of gap on formability of welded thin sheet, LDH test was caried out. At high welding speed, the partial penetration was obtained by low heat input. Otherwise, porosity was formed in the bead at low weld speed because of too much heat input. The optimum welding condition of welding was derived from bead width, penetration and hardness property. The maximum gap tolerance on laser welding was observed to be about 0.2mm. This gap size has good relationship with beam size of laser spot(about 0.3mm). The formability of welded sheet was about $80{\%}$ value of base metal and the gap size has not affected on the formability, although weld quality is dependent on the gap size.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.162-168
• /
• 2002

Hybrid Welding means the coupling of the energy of two different energy sources in a common process zone. This paper describes prospects in laser-arc-hybrid-welding. Different kinds of lasers ($CO_2$ laser and Nd:YAG laser) and arc processes (TIG, Plasma and GMA) are considered.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.510-516
• /
• 2002

Recently the laser welding technology has been applied increasingly for the automotive bodies. But the lap joint laser welding for 3 dimensional automotive body is new while the butt joint laser welding is well known as the tailored blank technology. In this study, the process window was found for the full penetration welding of the lap joint of the 1mm-thick high strength steel sheets. The limit curves and characteristic curves were suggested to define the boundaries and the contour lines in a space of the welding speed and the gap size. The characteristics of the weld sectional geometry were used to determine the limit curves. They are bead width, penetration depth and sectional area. After the observed data was analysed carefully, it was noticed that there was a transition point at which the sectional shape was changed and the bead area jumped as the welding speed was increased. Also a new concept of 'input energy Per volume' was suggested to distinguish the difference at the transition Point. The difference of sectional areas at the transition point can be related to the dynamic keyhole phenomena.