• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.70-75
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• 2000

The weld seam tracking system for arc welding process uses various kinds of sensors such as arc sensor, vision sensor, laser displacement and so on. Among the variety of sensors available, electro-magnetic sensor is one of the most useful methods especially in sheet metal butt-joint arc welding, primarily because it is hardly affected by the intense arc light and fume generated during the welding process, and also by the surface condition of weldments. In this study, a dual-electromagnetic sensor, which utilizes the induced current variation in the sensing coil due to the eddy current variation of the metal near the sensor, was developed for arc welding of sheet metal butt-joints. The dual-electromagnetic sensor thus detects the offset displacement of weld line from the center of sensor head even though there's no clearance in the joint. A set of design variables of the sensor were determined for the maximum sensing capability through the repeated experiments. Seam tracking is performed by correcting the position of sensor to the amount of offset displacement every sampling period. From the experimental results, the developed sensor showed the excellent capability of weld seam detection when the sensor to workpiece distance is near less than 5 mm, and it was revealed that the system has excellent seam tracking ability for the butt-joint of sheet metal.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.64-74
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• 2007

Because of the size and environment in the shipbuilding process, the portable type robot is required for the automatic seam tracking. For this reason, the structure of laser sensor should be considered in the initial design step and the coordinate transformation between welding robot and laser sensor, which is joint finder, must be identified exactly and the real time tracking algorithm based on these consideration could be developed. In this research, laser displacement sensor in which its structure is laser beam's vertical projection, is developed to recognize the location of weld joint. In practical applications, however, images of weld joints are often degraded because of the surface specularity or spatter. To overcome the problem, the constrained joint finding algorithm is proposed. In the approach of coordinate conversion rule for the visual feedback control among welding torch, robot body and laser sensor is applied by the same reference point method. In the real time seam tracking algorithms we propose constrained sampling method which uses look ahead distance. The RLS(Recursive Least Square) filter is applied to obtain the smooth tracking path from the sensitive edge data. From the experimental results, we could see the possibility that the developed laser sensor with proposed processing algorithm and real time seam tracking method can be used as a welding under the shipbuilding condition.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.156-166
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• 1995

Experimental models which are able to determine the deviation between weld line and weaving center by measuring the weld current during welding were proposed for the gas metal arc welding process. The models were used for developing a weld seam tracking system which controls the weaving speed of a welding torch. However, it was revealed that the tracking result of the system is affected by the welding conditions. Thus an arc sensor system was developed by using fuzzy control approach for overcoming the difficulty of modelling the nonlinear process. The rule base and parameters of the fuzzy control system were determined on the basis of the results of experiments. This fuzzy control system has shown the successful tracking capability for the wide operating range of welding conditions.

• 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.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.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.950-955
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• 2005

This paper describes an intelligent filler wire feeding device which can control 3- dimensional seam tracking and the filler wire speed by measuring the gap position and the joint gap width in laser welding. By means of visual sensor controlled filling the missing material into the joint gap and 3 dimensional seam tracking, lineup errors from manufacturing tolerances and the repeatability of lineup jigs and weld robot can be balanced and at an even seam quality which avoids weld defects. In this paper, we assessed weld quality in 2mm sheets of A16061 which had various gap width by using the intelligent filler wire feeding device.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.60-65
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• 2003

At present. welding of most pipes with large diameter is carried out by the manual process. Automation of the welding process is necessary f3r the sake of consistent weld quality and improvement in productivity. In this study, two vision sensors, based on the optical triangulation, were used to obtain the information for seam tracking and detecting the weld defects. Through utilization of the vision sensors, noises were removed, images and 3D information obtained and positions of the feature points detected. The aforementioned process provided the seam and leg position data, calculated the magnitude of the gap, fillet area and leg length and judged the weld defects by ISO 5817. Noises in the images were removed by using the gradient values of the laser stripe's coordinates and various feature points were detected by using an algorithm based on the iterative polygon approximation method. Since the process time is very important, all the aforementioned processes should be conducted during welding.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.729-733
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• 1997

Due to the variety of disturbance, it is not ease to accomplish the in-process detection of weld line with non-contact sensor. To get around this difficulties problem develop an automatic seam tracking weld system, the reliable signal processing algorithm has been recommanded. In this research, laser displacement sensor is applied as a seam finder in the automatic tracking system. The sensor is controlled by a dc servo motor which is mounted at X-Y moving table. X-Y moving table manipulated by an ac servo motor controls the position and velocity of the welding torch. First, X-Y table moves to Y-axis to search the welding joint feature before starting the welding, and welding joint is from the scanning data and weighting factor for each other. Second, weld line is determined using proposed signal processing algorithm during welding process. Form the experimental results, we could see the possibility that laser displacement sensor with procesed algorithm can be used as a seam finder in welding process under the severe noise (spatter,arc light etc.) condition