• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• 제19권10호
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• pp.1856-1863
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• 2005

In this study, a visual sensor system for weld seam tracking the I-butt weld joints in GMA welding was constructed. The sensor system consists of a CCD camera, a diode laser with a cylindrical lens and a band-pass-filter to overcome the degrading of image due to spatters and arc light. In order to obtain the enhanced image, quantitative relationship between laser intensity and iris opening was investigated. Throughout the repeated experiments, the shutter speed was set at 1/1000 second for minimizing the effect of spatters on the image, and therefore the image without the spatter traces could be obtained. Region of interest was defined from the entire image and gray level of the searched laser stripe was compared to that of weld line. The differences between these gray levels lead to spot the position of weld joint using central difference method. The results showed that, as long as weld line is within $\pm15^{o}$ from the longitudinal straight line, the system constructed in this study could track the weld line successfully. Since the processing time is no longer than 0.05 sec, it is expected that the developed method could be adopted to high speed welding such as laser welding.

• 한국공작기계학회논문집
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• 제16권5호
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• pp.14-23
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• 2007

Welding fabrication invariantly involves three district sequential steps: preparation, actual process execution and post-weld inspection. One of the major problems in automating these steps and developing autonomous welding system is the lack of proper sensing strategies. Conventionally, machine vision is used in robotic arc welding only for the correction of pre-taught welding paths in single pass. However, in this paper, multipass tracking more than single pass tracking is performed by conventional seam tracking algorithm and developed one. And tracking performances of two algorithm are compared in multipass tracking. As the result, tracking performance in multi-pass welding shows superior conventional seam tracking algorithm to developed one.

• 한국공작기계학회논문집
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• 제16권6호
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• pp.71-78
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• 2007

There have been continuous efforts to automate 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, and using this, the 3 dimensional geometry of the bead is measured in real time. For the application 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.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 2004년도 ICCAS
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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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• 제15권1호
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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.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 1995년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.1105-1109
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• 1995

A CCD-camera, which is structured with vision system, was used to realize automatic seam-tracking system and 3-D information which is needed to generate torch path, was obtained by using laser-slip beam. To extract laser strip and obtain welding-specific point, Adaptive Hough-transformation was used. Although the basic Hough transformation takes too much time to process image on line, it has a tendency to be robust to the noises as like spatter. For that reson, it was complemented with Adaptive Hough transformation to have an on-line processing ability for scanning a welding-specific point. the dead zone,where the sensing of weld line is impossible, is eliminated by rotating the camera with its rotating axis centered at welding torch. The camera angle is controlled so as to get the minimum image data for the sensing of weld line, hence the image processing time is reduced. The fuzzy controller is adapted to control the camera angle.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 2002년도 ICCAS
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• pp.56.3-56
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• 2002

For the weld quality improvement and the convenient operation of machines, laser vision system can be used to track weld seams on pressure vessels. There are many bad conditions to the weld grooves such as cutting error, gap variation of weld joint, and offset error of center line caused by misalignment. We developed a laser vision seam tracking system which consists of a laser vision sensor, a two axis positioning mechanism and a user interface program running on the Windows system. It was found that our system worked well for U, V and X shaped grooves. We used an industrial PC as the system controller to secure immunity to electrical noise and dust. We introduce here a simple and...

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제18권9호
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• pp.179-185
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• 2001

In this study, a visual sensor system for weld seam tracking the I-butt weld joints in GMA welding was constructed. The sensor system consists of a CCD camera, a diode laser with a cylindrical lens and a band-pass-filter to overcome the degrading of image due to spatters and arc light. In order to obtain the enhanced image, quantitative relationship between laser intensity and iris number was investigated. Throughout the repeated experiments, the shutter speed was set at 1-milisecond for minimizing the effect of spatters on the image, and therefore most of the spatter trace in the image have been found to be reduced. Region of interest was defined from the entire image and gray level of searched laser line was compared to that of weld line. The differences between these gray levels lead to spot the position of weld joint using central difference method. The results showed that, as long as weld line was within $^\pm$15$^\circ$from the longitudinal straight fine, the system constructed in this study could track the weld line successful1y. Since the processing time reduced to 0.05 sec, it is expected that the developed method could be adopted to high speed welding such as laser welding.

• 한국정밀공학회지
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• 제23권7호
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• pp.59-66
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• 2006

In laser welding, automatic seam tracking is important to adjust the laser head position in real time as it moves along the seam. Also if the joint gap is occurred, filling the missing material into the joint gap is necessary to prevent welding defects and bad welding quality. In general, the joint gap width is not constant along the seam due to a variety of reason. So it is essential to control the filler wire speed into the joint gap to acquire good welding quality. 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. We call this device as Smart Micro Control system(SMC). To achieve this objective, we assessed weld quality in 2mm sheets of A16061 which had various gap width by using the developed device. From the experimental results, It was found the possibility that the developed device could be used in welding various 3-dimensional structures.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.70-78
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• 1990

The harsh nature of welding environments makes welding a prime candidate for process automation. Among the variety of welding processes available, gas metal arc welding is one of the most frequently used methods, primarily because it is highly suited to a wide range of applications, and also to automation. Automatic seam tracking method is one of the most demanded techniques for automatic control of arc welding. In this study a seam tracking system has been developed by using the welding arc itself as a sensor. This paper described the principle and experimental result of the arc sensor system, as well as the development and application of the automatic CO_2$ welding for the horizontal fillet welding. A basic problem in horizontal fillet welding is the prevention of hanging bead formation such as undercut at the vertical plate and overlap at the horizontal plate. To produce the symmetric bead shape, the relationship of bead shape to welding parameters(welding velocity, weaving width, weaving speed, tip to workpiece distance) was also investigated.