• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.74-79
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• 2005

Spot welding widely used in automotive and aerospace industries has made it possible to produce more precise and smaller electric part by robotization and systemization of welding process. The quality of welding depends upon the size of nugget between the overlapped steel plates. Recently, the thickness of the steel plates becomes much thinner and hence, it introduces the smaller size of nugget. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the criterion to evaluate the quality of weld in order to obtain the optimal welding conditions for the better performance. In this paper, a thin steel plates, 0.1mm through 0.3mm thickness, have been spot-welded at different welding conditions and the nugget sizes are examined by defocused scanning microscopy. The relationships between nugget sizes and weldability have been investigated experimentally. The result of ultrasonic technique shows the good agreement with that of the tensile test.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.50-55
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• 2006

In an attempt to optimize friction spot joining process of Al alloys for automobiles, effects of joining parameters such as tool rotating speed, plunging depth, and joining time on the joints properties were investigated. A wide range of joining conditions could be applied to join Al alloys for automobile without defects in the weld zone except for certain welding conditions with a lower heat input. For sound joints without defects, tensile shear strength of joints was higher than acceptable criteria of tensile shear strength of resistance spot welded joints for aluminum.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.81-86
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• 2010

In resistance spot welding, regardless of the optimal condition, bad weld quality was still produced due to complicated manufacturing processes such as electrode wear, misalignment between the electrode and workpiece, poor part fit-up, and etc.. Therefore, the goal of this study was to measure the process signal which contains weld quality information, and to develop the process fault monitoring system. Welding force signal obtained through variety experimental conditions was analyzed and divided into three categories: good, shunt, and poor fit-up group. And then a monitoring algorithm made up of an artificial neural network that could estimate the process fault of each different category based on pattern was developed.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.43-45
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• 2000

Resistance Spot Welding has been one of the important process in the sheet metal fabrication of auto-body industry It is well known that the nugget formation of RSW is the major factor for the strength of the body. A high speed camera was used to consider initial melting and growth of the weld nugget in order to find out the nugget formation mechanism. It was observed that such mechanism had an effect on the dynamic resistance, which was a process parameter of resistance spot welding. Also, the relationship between the mechanism and process parameter was considered for the industrial application.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.77-79
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• 2006

While RSW(Resistance Spot Welding) have been the most successful sheet metal joining process in automotive industry, there are certain qualify issues due to the control system and its application process. Recent materials and coatings make the process more complicated resulting in new challenges for quality welds. In this research, an intelligent RSW system with adaptive control algorithm is introduced to overcome typical RSW issues and its applications to automotive body assembly are presented.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.386-391
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• 2002

Stainless rolling stocks are usually fabricated by spot welding process without painting. Indentation on the surface of the car body after spot welding injures the beauty of the stainless rolling stocks. In this study, electrode tips to reduce the indentation are developed and applied to the actual spot welding works. The developed tips are composed of head, nut hole far cooling water, body and resistance material. They provide large surface contact area with the base materials during spot welding and enhance the current density by necking. Experimental results using the developed tips show that small indentation and sufficient tensile shear strength is produced due to large contact area and enhanced current density.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1994.05a
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• pp.89-92
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• 1994

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1992.10a
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• pp.91-95
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• 1992

The resistance spot welding process has been extensively used for joining of sheet metals, which are subject to variation of many process variables. Many qualitive analyses of sampled process variables have been attempted to predict nugget size. In this paper, dynamic resistance and electrode movement signal which is a good indicative of the nugget size was examined by introducing an artificial neural network estimator. An artificial neural feedforward network with back-propagation of error was applied for the estimation of the nugget size. The prediction by the neural network is in good agreement with the actual nugget size for resistance spot welding of galvanized steel. The results are quite promising in that the quantitative estimation of the invisible nugget size can be achieved without conventional destructive testing of welds.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.71-76
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• 2006

In this study, the microstructure and mechanical properties of spot friction stir welded A 5052 alloy were investigated. Especially, the effect of insertion depth of welding tool on microstructural changes and mechanical properties was investigated in order to obtain the optimum spot friction stir welding condition. The lap shear load of spot friction stir welded A 5052 alloy plates showed lower value at the shallowest insertion depth and increased with tool insertion depth. At 1.6mm, the maximum value of 3.35 kN was obtained, and then dropped to lower load when the insertion depth was deeper. Spot friction stir welded joints showed shear fracture mode at shallower insertion depths and fracture mode changed to plug fracture mode as the insertion depth was deeper.