• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.679-682
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• 2002

Resistance spot welding using air gun has been used for joining the sheet metal in automotive manufacturing process. Although air gun has many advantages, it also has the limitation to control the pressure as a factor to improve weld quality. In this study, we apply servo gun using servo motor to resistance spot welding and find the relationship between welding pressure and welding quality. Trough the experiment to change welding pressure during the welding cycle, we can make it clear that the change of welding pressure is greatly influence on the welding quality. To get in a. using response surface methodology, drew out the optimal welding pressure profile for welding quality progresses. We made an optimal profile of welding pressure which improves welding quality using response surface methodology.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.679-684
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• 2011

Recently, STS 301L joints of side panels to frames for stainless steel rolling stock have been made out by using existing welding methods including Resistance Spot Welding, Laser Welding and Arc Welding. Most of the processes were jointed by spot welding because it is faster at welding and comparatively less expensive for investment in welding facilities than other methods. During spot welding, however, indentation of the metal surface was made due to pressure and melting property of welding. Moreover, since the melting metal was forced to periphery of the plate as indentation was made, sheet separation, which cracked apart between jointed sheets, was carried out. A slight deformation which resulted from sheet separation deteriorated the emotional quality of railway vehicles. This paper suggests that by processing conventional spot electrode tip appropriately, melting metal is able to push up around the processed part (Hollow Spot Electrode Tip) and prevent from being dislodged from first place to periphery. Consequently, sheet separation is remarkably decreased. Also, the emotional quality of appearance of stainless steel rolling stock is enhanced considerably.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.379-383
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• 2001

Resistance spot welding has been widely used in the sheet metal joining processes because of low cost, high productivity and convenience. Recently, automobile and aerospace industries are trying to replace partly steel sheets with aluminum alloy sheets. But in the case of dissimilar materials, to apply resistance spot welding has been known to be very difficult owing to the effect of melting temperature. On this study, an effort was made to apply spot welding of dissimilar sheet metals, 2024 aluminum alloy and zinc coated steel sheet, evaluate the spot weld quality with tensile-shear strength test and nondestructive evaluation technique, C-scan image methodology. In this study results, as the current below 11 kA, melting of materials is not achieved well. Also as the current exceeds to 13.5 kA, the more spatters happen at welded zone and tensile-shear strength lowered. So, the feasibility of C-scan image technique proposed in the study is found to be suitable evaluation method for resistance spot weldability.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.8-13
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• 2002

In order to obtain the basic informations for the development of high strength and high weldability aluminum alloy sheets, the experimental study was carried out to evaluate resistance spot welding characteristics and welding parameters (welding current, welding time, electrode force) far the aluminum alloy sheets. The mechanical properties of spot weld of aluminum alloy were evaluated by tensile shear test and by peel test at room temperature and also the welding possible zone was established through variation of current electrode force and welding time.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.39-43
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• 2006

A ferritic stainless steel, STS430, and a galvanized steel for case and frame of electronic goods are welded by resistance spot welding and resistance projection welding methods. In this study, resistance spot welding has been performed to investigate the weldability of dissimilar materials such as a ferritic stainless steel and a galvanized steel. Tensile load of the spot weld without heat treatment was 196 kN and brittle fracture occurred at interface between STS430 and nugget due to the high hardness, 380 Hv, in nugget. It was found that the hardness of as-welded nugget increased with higher cooling rate during resistance spot welding by comparing with GTA weld of same materials. Heat treatment by applying second current made nugget softened. Tensile load of heat treated weld increased and reached to 303 kN and fracture occurred at base metal, a galvanized steel.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.282-288
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• 2014

It is difficult to control welding variables during spot welding of non-ferrous metals like aluminum because of the low electrical resistance of the material. It has been suggested that a solid state welding process such as friction stir spot welding or extru-spot welding can be used to spot weld aluminum plates. In the extru-spot welding, there is a need to increase the weld strength by improving the shape of the welding die. The current study shows that the weld strength for an extru-spot welding can be increased by using a pin placed on the inside of the upper electrode in the welding die. In the current study, the deformed shape of the insert rivet and the stress distribution in the welding zone were analyzed by simulation. Extru-rivet spot welding experiments were performed by changing the height of pin on the inside of the upper electrode. From the experimental result, it is shown that the weld strength for an extru-rivet spot welding can be increased by adjusting the height of the pin. The optimal shape of the deformed rivet after the extru-rivet spot welding can be observed from the simulation results. The deformed shape of the insert rivet can also be controlled by the height of pin.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.115-122
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• 2011

This study is to propose an in-process monitoring system for micro resistance spot welding processes using minute accelerometer. A minute accelerometer is mounted on the upper moving electrode tip holder. With its high sensitivity and frequency response characteristics, accelerometer output signal has been successfully recorded and integrated twice to reflect electrode expansion during micro spot welding processes. The analysis of electrode expansion pattern was attempted to find its correlation with spot weld quality. Major previous findings1-6) regarding spot weld quality assessment with the electrode expansion signal in large scale resistance spot welding processes were proved to be true in this in-process monitoring system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.644-653
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• 1998

In resistance spot weld, the assurance of weld quality has been a long-standing problem. Since the weld nuggets if resustance spot welding form between the workpieces, visual detection of defects in usually impossible. Welding quality of resistance spot welding can be verified by non destructive and destructive inspections such as X-Ray inspection and testing of weld strength. But these tests, in addition to being time-consuming and costly, can entail risks due to sampling basis. The purpose of this study is the development of the monitoring system based on fuzzy inference, aimed at diagonosis of quality in resistance spot welding. The fuzzy inference system consists of fuzzy input variables, fuzzy membership functions and fuzzy rules. For inferring the welding quality(strength), the experimental data of the spot welding were acquired in various welding conditions with the monitoring system designed. Some fuzzy input variables-maximum, slop and difference values of electrode movement signals-were extracted from the experimental data. It was confirmed that the fuzzy inference values of strength have a .${\pm}$5% error in comparison with actual values for the selected welding conditions(9-10.5KA, 10-14 cycle, 250-300 $kg_f$). This monitoring system can be useful in improving the quality assurance and reliability of the resistance spot welding process.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.622-629
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• 2001

The aim of this experiment is to establish the method that obtains symmetrically two nuggets in microresistance series spot welding. The sheets of austenite stainless steel STS304 applied to various electronic parts were experimented by the inverter welding power source of polarity controllable type and by the twin head for left and right electrode force to be controlled separately. The experimental results were obtained as follows : 1) When series spot welding was carried out by DC 1 pulse as welding current with same electrode force at left and right, the asymmetry of nuggets was resulted from the larger nugget of the (-) pole because of the Peltier effect. The dynamic resistance of weld spot at left and right was appeared differently according to the growth of nuggets. 2) When AC 1 cycle by welding power source of polarity controllable type was applied, the nuggets were almost symmetrically formed. 3) In a twin head, if the electrode force of (-) pole was larger than that of (+) pole, the diameters of two nuggets became to same. It was confirmed that the dynamic resistance of (-) pole was decreased to the same level as it of (+) pole. 4) Although the forces of left and right electrode were same, and only DC 1 pulse was applied, symmetric nuggets were obtained if the conductivity of (+) pole was lower than it of (-) pole.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.59-65
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• 2005

The resistance spot welding is one of the most commonly used welding process for joining the sheet metal in automotive manufacturing process due to higher deposition rates and higher economy achieved. Control variables in the resistance spot welding for achieving high quality are welding current, welding force and welding time. Generally at the manufacturing scene, welding current Vs welding time lobe diagram is used to estimate weldability because controlling welding force is not practical due to economical reasons. However new automotive steel plates have been developed to make lightweight automobiles and to improve resistance against rusting. Also the weldability of these steel plates are worst than the existing steel plates because of changing bare metal and surface plating effect. In consequence of above mentioned reasons, it is necessary to use welding force to present the lobe diagram. In this study, we obtained the welding force Vs welding current lobe diagram for commonly used GA steel plate and found that the second order repression model of tensile shear strength was useful in reducing the number of experiments, and the indentation, and thickness change during welding were used as a response to estimate quantitatively expulsion.