• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제32권3호
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• pp.243-251
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• 2015

In order to develop an automatic system for welding thin steel plates with curvature such as the corrugated membranes of an LNG storage tank, a rotating mechanism should be firstly designed for the torch to easily follow the weld seam with a constant distance and angle. In this study, a torch rotating mechanism consisting of three circular links, two square-type links and a torch link was proposed for automation of the welding process. A weld-seam tracking system with two axis slides and the proposed rotating mechanism was successfully simulated with a dynamic simulation software. A prototype tracking system was manufactured and a tracking test with the system was then carried out. The test results with tracking system showed that the rotating mechanism could be implemented and it was feasible to be used in automatic tracking of weld seam with curvature.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제13권1호
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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.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제21권7호
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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.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제18권4호
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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 Welding and Joining
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• 제16권3호
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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.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 1997년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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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

• 대한조선학회 특별논문집
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• 대한조선학회 2013년도 특별논문집
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• pp.73-80
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• 2013

From broad point of view, seam tracking has been one of main issues with respect to welding automation. Several attempts have been successful for seam tracking of fixed weaving width. As a solution of the seam tracking methods for varying groove width, the visual sensors such as CCD cameras have been adopted. Although the vision sensing techniques can achieve high accuracy, the weak point is that well-prepared vision sensor environment should be required to obtain high-quality visual measurements which can be easily affected by significant noises in industrial areas. This paper proposed an alternative seam tracking algorithm for narrow groove. A special measurement device for arc voltage, in this study, is developed to enhance the reliability of the measured welding signals. Based on the developed arc sensor algorithm, an automatic weld-width tracking algorithm is also proposed, which is able to predict the weld-position more accurately. The usefulness of the automatic weld-width tracking algorithm was well verified by applying it to gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW).

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제16권3호
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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.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제14권6호
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• pp.131-139
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• 1996

The response of the arc sensor using the welding current and/or welding voltage as its outputs has been obtained by the analysis and/or experiments of the static characteristics of arc sensor. But in order to improve the reliability of arc sensor, it is necessary to know its dynamic characteristics. So in this paper, it is presented the dynamic model of arc sensor including the power source, arc voltage, electrode burnoff rate, and wire feed rate. A numerical simulation of the dynamic model of arc sensor was implemented, computing the welding current with input of CTWD. The results of computer simulations and experiments of $CO_2$arc welding showed that a linear relationship between weaving center - weld line distance and current area difference was established. Additionally, a real-time weld seam tracking system interfaced with industrial welding robot was constructed, the result of the weld seam tracking experiment for weld line with an initial offset error of 5$^{\circ}$was good.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.122-131
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• 1995

An automatic welding equipment for thick plates requires the capability of the seam tracking of the weld line which often includes misalignment of the workpiece and variation of groove width. In this study, an automatic welding equipment and control algorithms based on the arc sensor were proposed for the GMA welding of thick plates which had misalignment and gap variation. The developed system being constituted with 5 axis can be automatically controlled by computer and also automnatically set the welding conditions such as welding current, and voltage. The proposed algorithms for the seam tracking in multi-pass welding of the thick plates were constituted as follows : the detection of weaving-end point for findng the variation of groove width, the control of welding velocity for acquiring a constant thickness deposition of weld metal, and the calculation of groove width and height of an arbitrary pass in the multi-pass weld. As results of the application of the system, it was revealed that the system had a good capability in seam tracking and made an excellent weld quality in V groove butt joint.