• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.132-140
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• 2000

Plasma arc cutting is one of the most widely used processes in metal cutting fields and is a process that produces parted metal plates by cutting them with an arc plasma established between the electrode tip and the plate(workpiece). When the tip-to-workpiece distance varies during cutting, the cut quality, for example the kerf width, is deteriorated by the change of plasma arc. The variations of tip-to-workpiece distance are due to the different factors such as inaccuracies in setting the torch or workpiece, thermal distortions during cutting, and uneven surface of workpiece. The control to keep the tip-to-workpiece distance constant is thus indispensable to improve the flexibility of automatic plasma arc cutting system applications. In this study, an arc sensor which utilizes the electrical signal obtained from the plasma arc itself was developed. The arc sensor has an advantage that no particular sensing device is necessary and real-time sensing of the tip-to-workpiece distance is possible directly under the plasma arc. The relationship between plasma arc voltage and tip-to-workpiece distance was determined through the repeated experimental results. The model was used for developing an automatic tip-to-workpiece distance control system of plasma arc cutting. It could be shown that the proposed system has a successful capability of tip-to-workpiece distance control.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.44-54
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• 1998

In this study a new arc sensor algorithm for automatic weld seam tracking was proposed, which uses the relative welding current variation according to the tip-to-workpiece distance in GMA welding. Since the new developed arc sensor algorithm is not sensitive to unstable factors of arc signal, the system is expected to get rid of the problems of already existing arc sensor system which include the difficulty of modeling the process for various welding conditions and limitation of application to thick plate welding. Thus the system is applicable not only to thick plate welding but also to thin plate welding. To implement the new arc sensor algorithm the system parameters which include sampling time, averaging range, weighting factor of moving averaging, basic compensation time, and basic compensation distance were determined by experimental analysis. Consequently this system has shown the successful tracking capability for the various 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.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.51-56
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• 2002

The weld seam tracking system for arc welding process uses various kinds of sensors such as arc sensor, vision sensor, laser displacement sensor 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 I-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 was determined far 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 ㎜, and it was revealed that the system has excellent seam tracking ability for the I-butt joint of sheet metal.

• 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.14 no.5
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• pp.85-91
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• 1997

Air grinding time in grinding process has a great effect on its efficiency due to low feedrate. This paper presents a reduction methos of air grinding time in cylindrical plunge grinding operation. Tje reduction of air grinding time is accomplished by finding the distance between contact point and rising point of ultra- sonic signal of the grinding wheel to workpiece. It uses a variation of sound signal generated by the flow of coolant when the grinding wheel approaches to workpiece. The ultrasonic sensor with 23 kHz center fre- quency and 8 kHz bandwidth is used to find the nearest approaching point(NAP). Monitoring and control system of the grinding conditions is implemented with CNC controller to control feedrate override and ultrasonic sensor to find NAP. The experimental result shows that the ultrasonic signal is a good measure- ment to find NAP. But it needs the considerations for the effect of the relationship between flowrate of coolant and diameter of workpiece.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.190-198
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• 1992

Among the variety of welding processes available, the flux cored arc welding is one of the most frequently used process, because of its wide range of application and high productivity. The weld joint tracking is indispensable to improve the flexibility of the arc welding robot application for the flux cored arc welding (FCAW) process. In this study, an arc sensor which utilizes the electrical signal obtained from the welding arc itself was developed for weld joint tracking in FCAW. Because a model of the welding arc in flux cored arc welding was required to develop the arc sensor, a mathematical model was proposed by analysing the welding arc behaviour, and also an experimental model by using the factorial experiment and least square method. For overcoming the fluctuation in the welding current signal during tracking the weld joint, it was fitted to a curve which is inversely proportional to a trace of tip-to-workpiece distance by using the quadratic curve-fitting method.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.66-72
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• 2005

An electromagnetic inductive sensor consisted of one exciter and three separated (triple) detectors has been developed for both tracking the weld seam of a workpiece and controlling the sensor-to-workpiece distance (height) simultaneously. The left and right detectors are used to track the seam, while the fore and the other two detectors allow the sensor to determine the height and the gap width by being coupled their outputs together. A series of experiments with the proposed sensor located above a mild steel plate containing a weld seam of gap are carried out to examine the feasibility of the sensor. The results revealed that the proposed sensor could fairly well track the desired seam and also well control the height to be constant even when the gap width of the seam varied. The gap width can be also determined during the seam tracking by using the sensor outputs. As a consequence, these can provide the developed sensor with substantial improvement for industrial uses with respect to the previous electromagnetic sensors being used for the weld seam tracking.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.23-30
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• 1990

The robotic welding has been adapted positively in many welding shops forthe purpose of improving the welding efficiency and liberating operators from the severe working atmosphere. But for a large-size structure with thick plates like ship-building and every kind of plants manufacturing, the application of the arc welding robots is not established yet. The reason is assumed that the conventional arc welding robots are not adaptive for multi-pass welding of thick plates whose grooves are not so accurate. As one solution to this problem, a guidance system which uses the welding arc itself as a sensor is largely used. In this study the velocity controller which changes the tip to workpiece distance for regulating the weld proposed. The proportional and integral gain of velocity controller were determined by using the computer simulation of the control system, and the simulation results compared with the experimental ones. It was revealed that the developed control system using the arc sensor principle has a good capability of tracking the weld joint, although some more studies will be needed to refine the model of arc current.

• 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.