• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.55-63
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• 1998

Among the position sensing methods available, the arc sensor which utilizes the electrical signal obtained from the welding arc itself is one of the most prevalently used methods, because it has an advantage that no particular sensing device is necessary and real-time sensing of a groove position is possible directly under the arc. The authors have already developed a seam tracking system that contains a new arc sensor algorithm, which uses the relative welding current variation according to the tip-to-workpiece distance in GMA welding. In this study a torch height control algorithm for automatic weld seam tracking was proposed for completing the previous system, which uses an on-off control technique. To implement the torch height control algorithm during weld seam tracking the system parameters which include 2nd averaging range, weighting factor for 2nd moving averaging, and Z-directional basic compensation distance were determined by experimental analysis. Finally the two different height control methods, one is simple on-off control and the other on-off control using a reference current value , were compared in their tracking abilities.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-91
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• 1997

In this study, a magnetic sensor to make use of eddy current was developed to detect the weld seam of butt joint in the sheet metal arc welding. This system consist of the sensor device for detecting the weld line, the servo control device for driving the weld torch movement and the control unit. A signal processing was applied to smooth the output signal of the sensor. The weld joint was determined by using a 1st order differential method. To improve tracking accuracy of the system, moving average method which has an effect of proportional and weighted integral control was applied to a series of the weld joint positions obtained above. The weld line for tracking was generated by using data regeneration algorithm. Based on these results, each servo motor was controlled by pulse generator. From experimental results, it was revealed that this system has excellent detecting ability for weld line and seam tracking ability.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2001

For the horizontal fillet welding with one plate in a vertical position, there will be a higher tendency of weld metal falling down rather than for the butt-welding in flat position. Such phenomenon could bring about the overlap or deflection of weld pool, and consequently induce the poor mechanical strength of weldments. Therefore, a precise position control of welding torch in conjunction with the weld qualify plays an important role in welding robot applications. In the present study, an experimental method was proposed for deriving a mathematical model between the leg length and the welding conditions. Finally, an algorithm was proposed for weld seam tracking and improvement of the weld quality. The reliability of the proposed algorithm was evaluated through various experiments, which showed that the proposed algorithm can be very effective for tracking the weld line and simultaneously achieving the sound weld bead.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.643-646
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• 2000

In this study, we constructed a preview-sensing visual sensor system for weld seam tracking in real time in GMA welding. A sensor part consists of a CCD camera, a band-pass filter, a diode laser system with a cylindrical lens, and a vision board for inter frame process. We used a commercialized robot system which includes a GMA welding machine. To extract the weld seam we used a inter frame process in vision board from that we could remove the noise due to the spatters and fume in the image. Since the image was very reasonable by using the inter frame process, we could use the simplest way to extract the weld seam from the image, such as first differential and central difference method. Also we used a moving average method to the successive position data of weld seam for reducing the data fluctuation. In experiment the developed robot system with visual sensor could be able to track a most popular weld seam, such as a fillet-joint, a V-groove, and a lap-joint of which weld seam include planar and height directional variation.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.102-110
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• 1998

The horizontal fillet welding is prevalently used in heavy and ship building industries to fabricate the large scale structures. A deep understanding of the horizontal fillet welding process is restricted, because the phenomena occurring in welding are very complex and highly non-linear characteristics. To achieve the satisfactory weld bead geometry in robot welding system, the seam tracking algorithm should be reliable. The number of seam tracker was developed for arc welding automation by now. Among these seam tracker, the arc sensor is prevalently used in industrial robot welding system because of its low cost and flexibility. However, the accuracy of arc sensor would be decreased due to the electrical noise and metal transfer. In this study, the signal processing algorithm based on the neural network was implemented to enhance the reliability of measured welding current signals. Moreover, the seam tracking algorithm in conjunction with the signal processing algorithm was implemented to trace the center of weld line. It was revealed that the neural network could be effectively used to predict the welding current signal at the end of weaving.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.30-37
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• 2004

There have been continuous efforts on automating welding processes. This automation process could be said to fall into two categories, weld seam tracking and weld quality evaluation. Recently, the attempts to achieve these two functions simultaneously are on the increase. For the study presented in this paper, a vision sensor is made, a vision system is constructed and using this, the 3 dimensional geometry of the bead is measured on-line. For the application as in welding, which is the characteristic of nonlinear process, a fuzzy controller is designed. And with this, an adaptive control system is proposed which acquires the bead height and the coordinates of the point on the bead along the horizontal fillet joint, performs seam tracking with those data, and also at the same time, controls the bead geometry to a uniform shape. A communication system, which enables the communication with the industrial robot, is designed to control the bead geometry and to track the weld seam. Experiments are made with varied offset angles from the pre-taught weld path, and they showed the adaptive system works favorable results.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.917-922
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• 2003

In this paper, a high speed rotating arc sensor for automatic fillet welding is introduced. In order to track the welding seam, The high speed rotating arc sensor is used. The welding tip of a high speed rotating arc sensor rotates about 3000 rpm using DC motor. The rotating torch is driven by gear between welding torch body and wire guide. The welding current is measured by using the current sensor and rot at ing position sensor. To realize the welding seam tracking algorithm with accuracy, a software filter algorithm using the moving average method is applied to the measured welding current in the microprocessor. The welding mobile robot with two wheels and two sliders is developed for fillet welding. The welding mobile robot can control its traveling direction and turn itself around the corner. The effectiveness is proven through the experimental results conducted with varied fillet tracking patterns.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.62-65
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• 1999

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.1019-1025
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• 2003

There are many kinds of seam trackers in the industrial welding field. We are proposed the contact seam tracking sensor applying strain gauges kind of contact sensor that mostly used in welding part now. For this seam tracking experiment, we made the strain gauges sensor by ourselves and tested how well the sensor tracks the seam. The experiment device consist of strain gauges sensor, amplifier circuit of strain gauges signal, saw wave generator, MOSFET power diving circuit and X-Y slide by moved DC motor. The tracking areas are X-Y planes(left, right, up and down) and the change of strain gauge resistance causes to move DC motor that connected to X-Y slide. As a result of experiment, we confirmed that the strain gauges sensor tracks a seam well, and X-Y slide DC motor was controlled by PWM control.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.34-41
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• 2003

Weld quality monitoring and seam tracking along the butt-joint lengthwise to the tube axis are studied. The material of tube is 60kg/$\textrm{mm}^2$ grade steel sheet, and the longitudinal butt-joint is shaped by 2 roll bending machine. The tube with a thickness of 1.5mm, diameter of 105.4mm and length of 2000mm is successfully obtained by the $CO_2$ laser welding system equipped with a seam tracker and plasma sensor. Experimental results show that the developed welding system can be used for the precision seam tracking and the real-time monitoring of weld quality, and the laser welded tube can be used for car body md component after tubular hydroforming.