• Special Issue of the Society of Naval Architects of Korea
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• 2013.12a
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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).

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.5
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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.

• International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.20-28
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• 2003

This paper presents development of a high speed rotating arc sensor system using a microprocessor based controller with tracking function for a complicate curved fillet welding line, The welding tip connected to the torch body is eccentrically positioned from the centerline of the torch, The area during one rotating cycle is divided into 4 regions of front, rear, right and left in welding direction of the torch tip to determine the horizontal deviation between the welding seam and the torch position. The average value at each region is calculated using the regional current values and a low pass filter incorporated with the moving average method is implemented. The effectiveness of the developed system is proven through the experimental results for several kinds of complicate curved fillet welding lines.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.129-140
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• 1998

An interface system was developed to offer the welding capability to a robot controller which had not any embedded function for arc welding before, and also an arc sensor algorithm was proposed for weld seam tracking of the welding robot. For the interface system between the robot controller and welding equipments, data communication software and interface connections were composed. The interface system was mae to correspond welding condition, correction data, operation sequence and current status with the robot controller by mutual had shaking and digital signal transfer. Graphic user interface program developed under the environment of windows made it easy to monitor data communication and operation status, and to control welding and sensing sequence. Arc sensing algorithm proposed in this study to compensate torch position error was based on a fuzzy logic with the variables of current difference and current differenced change at torch weaving extremities. The developed interface system could be successfully implemented in between welding equipments and the robot controller, and showed normal status and exact function in data and signal communication between the systems. The whole robot welding system was then examined to verify its welding and seam tracking capabilities in horizontal fillet, vertical fillet, and 3-dimensional fillet weldment. The experiments revealed sound weld bead shapes and also good seam tracing results.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.85-94
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• 1998

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. In this paper, developed vision processing techniques are detailed, and their application in welding fabrication is covered. The software for joint tracking system is finally proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.76-82
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• 2000

An arc sensor system to compensate positional errors was developed on the foundation of sensor interface system to make use of the on-line shift function of industrial welding robot. Investigating the on-line shift function, we examine the quantitative relationship between the deviation from programmed path and the correction data transferred from personal computer to robot controller. The number of input parameters for weld seam tracking can be reduced by making the relationship between the deviation and the correction data during half weaving be the function of only cross time. With the results of weld seam tracking for the butt joint with V-groove and fillet joint of sheet metal, good performance was implemented. By developing the sensor interface system to compensate the positional errors, industrial welding robot can be expected to contribute to the promotion of welding automation.

• 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.

• 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.5
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• pp.119-133
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• 1998

To implement full automation in pipe welding, it si most important to develop special sensors and their related systems which act like human operator when detecting irregular groove conditions. In this study, an automatic pipe Gas Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) system was proposed to full control pipe welding procedure with intelligent sensor systems. A five-axes manipulator was proposed for welding torch to automatically access to exact welding position when pipe size and welding angle were given. Pool status and torch position were measured by using a weld-pool image monitoring and processing technique in root-pass welding for weld seam tracking and weld pool control. To overcome the intensive arc light, pool image was captured at the instance of short circuit of welding power loop. Captured image was processed to determine weld pool shape. For weld seam tracking, the relative distance of a torch position from the pool center was calculated in the extracted pool shape to move torch just onto the groove center. To control penetration of root pas, gap was calculated in the extracted pool image, and then weld conditions were controlled for obtaining appropriate penetration. welding speed was determined with a fuzzy logic, and welding current and voltage were determined from a data base to correspond to the gap. For automatic fill-pass welding, the function of human operator of real time weld seam control can be substituted by a sensor system. In this study, an arc sensor system was proposed based on a fuzzy control logic. Using the proposed automatic system, root-pass welding of pipe which had gap variation was assured to be appropriately controlled in welding conditions and in torch position by showing sound welding result and good seam tracking capability. Fill-pass welding by the proposed system also showed very successful result by tracking along the offset welding line without any control of human operator.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.326-328
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• 2005

High speed rotational arc sensing is an important method to detect the torch deviation during automatic seam tracking of arc welding. In this paper, a mathematic model of high speed rotational arc sensing is analyzed. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental results. The current waveforms at the beginning of the welding are different from those at middle of the welding because of the formation of the weld bead profile. The signal patterns for seam tracking and end-point detection are proposed. A phase shift between the rotation and the current variation is also discovered in the experiments.