• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.49-54
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• 2007

Since the wall thickness can be up to 6" or greater, welds must be made in many layers, each layer containing several passes. However, the welding time for the conventional welding processes such as SAW(Submerged Arc Welding) and FCAW(Flux Cored Arc Welding) can be required many hours. The aim of this paper is to develop a high speed welding system with multi-torch and laser vision sensor for increasing the production speed on the line and to remove the need for the operator so that the system can run automatically for the complete multi-torch multi-layer weld. It was shown that the developed laser vision sensor and analysis of arc blow for multi-torch were effective for multi-pass seam tracking and stable arc. A new automated multi-torch welding systems for thick wall applications has been proved in several production lines.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 2010.07a
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• pp.242-243
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• 2010

This paper investigates a power supply of medium voltage with enhanced ignition characteristics for plasma torch. Series resonant half-bridge topology is presented to be a suitable ignition circuitry. The ignition circuitry is integrated into the main power conversion system of a multi-phase staggered three-level dc-dc converter with a diode front-end rectifier. The plasma torch rated for 3MW, 2kA and having the physical size of 1m long is selected to be a high enthalpy source in waste disposal system. The steady-state and transient operations of plasma torch are simulated. The parameters of Cassie-Mary arc model are calculated based on 3D magneto-hydrodynamic simulations. Circuit simulation waveform shows that the ripple of arc current can be maintained within ${\pm}10%$ of its rated value under the existence of load disturbance. This power conversion configuration provides high enough ignition voltage around 5KA during ignition phase and high arc stability under the existence of arc disturbance noise resulting in a high-performance plasma torch system.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 1996

Development of an automatic TIG welding system incorporating a vision sensor and torch control mechanism leads to an improved welding quality and greater production efficiency. The automatic welding system should be greatly restricted in its size and weight for the LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas) storage tank and also provide a unique torch rotating mechanism which keeps the torch tip in the constant position while the angle is changed continuously to maintain the welding torch substantially perpendicular to the weld line. The developed system is driven by two translation axes X, Z and one rotational axis. A moving line window method is adopted to the image recognition of the corrugated membranes with specular reflection. This method decides original laser stripe patterns in image which is affected by multi-reflection. A self-teaching algorithm, which guides the automatic welding machine with the information provided by the CCD camera without any previous learning of a reference trajectory, was developed for tracking the corrugated membrane of the LNG tank along the weld line.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2000

In this Paper a basic technique of gantry robot control system has been developed to weld the curved part of a large structure. A welding robot is designed to rotate torch and make the torch angle normal to the welding surface. The Kalman filter is applied to obtain the smooth welding path signal from the noised Sensing data. A welding path finding algorithm has been developed in Turbo-C language.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.591-598
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• 2011

This paper investigates a power supply of medium voltage with enhanced ignition characteristics for plasma torches. A series resonant half-bridge topology is presented as a suitable ignition circuitry. The ignition circuitry is integrated into the main power conversion system of a multi-phase staggered three-level dc-dc converter with a diode front-end rectifier. A plasma torch rated at 3MW, 2kA and having a physical size of 1m is selected to be the high enthalpy source for a waste disposal system. The steady-state and transient operations of a plasma torch are simulated. The parameters of a Cassie-Mary arc model are calculated based on 3D magneto-hydrodynamic simulations. The circuit simulation waveform shows that the ripple of the arc current can be maintained within ${\pm}10%$ of its rated value under the presence of a load disturbance. This power conversion configuration provides a high enough ignition voltage, around 5KA, during the ignition phase and high arc stability under the existence of arc disturbance noise resulting in a high-performance plasma torch system.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.706-713
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• 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 eterioration 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.

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

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1992.10a
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• pp.797-800
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• 1992

Much experience and knowledge is needed in welding because there are many working parameters and quantitative description is difficult. Therefore, introduction of expert system based on such data base has been required. In this study, welding heat and shape of bead was controlled by fuzzy inference with the welding condition, position error and voltage and current error of robot. For this, torch trajectory of robot was generated by modeling the working data with CAD and then welding was carried out through down loading to robot. And working error was controlled by on-line communication.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.227-229
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• 2003

Low heat input welding methods have been investigated in order to minimize the HAZ softening of the 600MPa grade fine grained steel weldment. The welding processes of interest were a high speed FCA welding with a multi-torch welding system, laser welding with filler feeding and hybrid laser welding. No HAZ softening was found for all the weldments formed with low heat input less than 10kJ/cm. Tensile strength of the weldments was high enough to satisfy the required value. Impact toughness of the weldments was also good even at -20$^{\circ}C$.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.320-323
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• 2002

This paper presents a new generation of system for pressure vessel and shipbuilding. Typical pressure vessel and ship building weld joint preparations are either traditional V, butt, fillet grooves or have narrow or semi narrow gap profiles. The fillet and U groove are prevalently used in heavy industries and shipbuilding to melt and join the parts. Since the wall thickness can be up to 6" or greater, welds must be made in many layers, each layer containing several passes. However, the welding time for the conventional processes such as SAW(Submerged Arc Welding) and FCAW(Flux Cored Arc Welding) can be many hours. Although SAW and FCAW are normally a mechanized process, pressure vessel and ship structures welding up to now have usually been controlled by a full time operator. The operator has typically been responsible for positioning each individual weld run, for setting weld process parameters, for maintaining flux and wire levels, for removing slag and so on. The aim of the system is to develop a high speed welding system with multitorch for increasing the production speed on the line and to remove the need for the operator so that the system can run automatically for the complete multi-torch multi-layer weld. To achieve this, a laser vision sensor, a rotating torch and an image processing algorithm have been made. Also, the multitorch welding system can be applicable for the fine grained steel because of the high welding speed and lower heat input compare to a conventional welding process.