• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.9-18
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• 2007

There have been continuous efforts for automation of joint tracking system. This automation process is mainly used to do in root pass of gas metal arc welding in the field of heavy industry and shipbuilding etc. For automation, it is important using of vision sensor. Welding robot with vision sensor is used for weld seam tracking on welding fabrication. Recently, it is used to on post-weld inspection for weld quality evaluation. For real time seam tracking, it is very important role in vision process technique. Vision process is included in filtering and thinning, segmentation processing, feature extraction and recognition. In this paper, it has shown performance comparison results of seam tracking for real time root pass on gas metal arc welding. It can be concluded better segment splitting method than iterative averaging technique in the performance results of seam tracking.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.113-121
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• 1996

The arc sensor has been most widely used for weld seam tracking through welding current or voltage variation. In this work, the relation between the arc light intensity and welding condition is investigated using heat balance in the Plasma for its possible application to seam tracking in the GMAW process. The arc light intensity is derived to be the function of the arc length and welding current Experiments are carried out to verify the proposed heat balance model. Performances of least square and integration methods to process the signals for seam tracking are compared experimentally. Predicted arc light intensity shows reasonably good agreement with experimental results. The weld seam is successfully tracked through the arc light intensity. The least square and integration methods demonstrate almost same performance of seam tracking with $CO_2$gas shielding.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.1506-1511
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• 2003

This paper describes an automatic weld seam tracking method of plasma arc welding system designed for the corrugation panel that consists of a linear section and a curved section with various curvatures. Due to the complexity of the panel shape, it is difficult to find a seam and operate a torch manually in the welding process. So, the laser vision sensor for seam tracking is designed for sensing the seam position and controlling a torch automatically. To achieve precise seam tracking, the design of sensor head, image simulation, and calibration are carried out. Through a series of experiment result, compensation algorithm is added and real time error compensation is achieved. The experiment result shows that this vision sensor works effectively. It will provide more precise welding performance and convenience to the operator.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.83-90
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• 2000

It was attempted to improve seam-tracking performance by applying a new arc-sensing algorithm for FCAW(flux-cored arc welding) process in fillet joints. For this study the authors have introduced three different weight factors: $\circled1$ arc currents at the weaving end are more weighted, $\circled2$ arc currents are evenly weighted along the weaving, and $\circled3$ arc currents at the weaving center are more weighted. To evaluate the 3 factors the values of signal-to-noise(S/N) ratio has been measured. The values were obtained for various welding conditions with different gaps in horizontal and vertical fillet joints. The test results showed that the S/N ratio of the 1st case was highest which resulted in the best of seam tracking performance. In addition, the comparison between the seam tracking performance in horizontal fillet joints and that in vertical ones has been done, and the result showed that tracking performance in vertical joints was relatively better than that in horizontal joints.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.775-778
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• 1996

In this research, the robustness of a seam tracking for the automatic welding system is studied. The laser displacement sensor is used as a seam finder. X-Y moving table drived by ac servo motor controls the position and velocity of the torch-and-sensor part. However, dc servo motor is used to control the position and velocity of the torch. The sensor locates ahead of torch to preview the weld line, and brings about the inaccuracy on the torch tracking. To enhance the robustness on this system against the influence of disturbances and model uncertainty, H$\_$.inf./ control is applied to the angular motion of torch. The simulation shows that the tracking accuracy improved significantly. Also, experimental results give a good performance of H$\_$.inf./ control strategy to the automatic seam tracking system for the welding.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.31 no.11
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• pp.1007-1013
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• 2014

In this study to improve the productivity, advantage Tandem circumferential weld process of seam tracking system was applied for the laser vision sensor. Weld geometry scanning laser vision sensor and PLC control unit are used to scan correct positioning of welding torch when the program is implemented so that it can correctly track the welding line. The welding experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of laser vision seam tracking sensor in tandem welding process. The seam tracking several experiments was to determine the reliability of the system, welding experiments relatively good quality welding bead was confirmed. Furthermore, the PLC program for seam tracking was used to confirm the validity of the application of tandem welding process according to the benefits of increased productivity, which is expected to contribute to national competitiveness.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.66-80
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• 1997

This paper describes a newly developed arc-sensing algorithm of seam-tracking for FCA W (flux-cored arc welding) horizontal fillet welding. In this algorithm, arc current and the Weighted-Are-Current (WAC) are used to adjust the position of a weld torch in directions of bead throat and weaving, respectively. The WAC, which is newly devised in this study, means that arc current in the vicinity of weaving end is more emphasized than that in the center of weaving. The reason of this is because there usually exists much noise in the center of weaving due to abrupt change of arc length in case some empty gaps exist in a fillet joint Variance analysis was performed in order to check the effect of weld parameters on arc current and the WAC. As a result, the relationships between tip-to-workpiece distance and arc current, and between weaving offset and the WAC were established.To check "the validity of the algorithm, seam-tracking experiments were performed ;mder various welding condition. The result of experiments showed a satisfactory tracking performance in the presence of empty gaps in a horizontal fillet joint.et joint.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2009

Because of its fast and precise welding performance, laser welding is becoming a new excellent welding method. However, the precise focusing and robust seam tracking are required to apply laser welding to the practical fields. In order to laser weld a type of T joint like a circular pipe on a square pipe, which could be met in the three dimensional structure such as an aluminum space frame, a visual sensor system was developed for automation of focusing and seam tracking. The developed sensor system consists of a digital CCD camera, a structured laser, and a vision processor. It is moved and positioned by a 2-axis motorized stage, which is attached to a 6 axis robot manipulator with a laser welding head. After stripe-type structured laser illuminates a target surface, images are captured through the digital CCD camera. From the image, seam error and defocusing error are calculated using image processing algorithms which includes efficient techniques handling continuously changed image patterns. These errors are corrected by the stage off-line during welding or teaching. Laser welding of a circular pipe on a square pipe was successful with the vision tracking system by reducing the path positioning and de focusing errors due to the robot teaching or a geometrical variation of specimens and jig holding.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2004.08a
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• pp.499-503
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• 2004

This application-oriented paper describes an automated welding carriage system to weld a thin corrugated workpiece with welding seam tracking function. Hyundai Heavy Industries Corporation has developed an automatic welding carriage system, which utilizes pulsed plasma arc welding process for corrugated sheets. It can obtain high speed welding more than 2 times faster than traditional TIG based welding system. The aim of this development is to increase the productivity by using automatic plasma welding carriage systems, to track weld seam line using vision sensor automatically, and finally to provide a convenience to operator in order to carry out welding. In this paper a robust image processing and a distance based tracking algorithms are introduced for corrugated workpiece welding. The automatic welding carriage system is controlled by the programmable logic controller(PLC), and the automatic welding seam tracking system is controlled by the industrial personal computer(IPC) equipped with embedded OS. The system was tested at actual workpiece to show the feasibility and performance of proposed algorithm and to confirm the reliability of developed controller.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.43-49
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• 2004

In this study, a visual sensor system which can detect I-butt weld joint with height variation and includes a seam tracking algorithm was investigated. Three-dimensional position of an object can be acquired by using the method of distance measurement, i.e., an optical trigonometry which results from the spatial relations between the camera, the object and the structured light by a visible laser. Effects of laser intensity and iris number for the image quality as well as object material were investigated for the optical system design. For the image processing, a region of interest is defined from the whole image and a line image of laser is drew by using the gray level difference in the image. From the drew laser line, the weld joint can be recognized in searching the biggest point position calculated from the central difference method. Through a series of welding experiments, a good tracking performance was confirmed under GMA welding.