• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.4 s.97
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• pp.37-45
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• 1999

Many automated welding equipment are used in the industry. However, there are some problems to get quality welds because of the geometric error, thermal distortion, and incorrect joint fit-up. These factors can make the gap between base plates in case of a thick plate welding. The welding product with the quality welds can not be obtained without consideration of the gap. In this paper, the robot path and welding conditions are modified to get the quality weld by detecting the position and size of the gap. In this work, a low-priced laser range sensor is used. The 3-dimensional information is obtained using the motion of a robot, which holds a laser range sensor. The position and size of the gap is calculated using signal processing of the measured 3-dimensional information of joint profile geometry. The data measured by a laser range sensor is segmented by an iterative end point method. The segmented data is optimized by the least square method. The existence of gap is detected by comparing the data with the segmented shape of template. The effects of robot measuring speed and gap size are also tested. The recognizability fo the gap is verified as good by comparing the real joint profile and the calculated joint profile using the signal processing.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.66-75
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• 1999

Weld bead quality in tailored blank(TB) is critically affected by edge preparation of sheets. The edge quality of prepared sheets for TB can be classified into straightness and the cross section quality of sheared plane such as a ratio of shear face, shear plane angle, etc. In order to have a good edg quality for butt-welding sheets, precision shearing will be recommended. In this paper, the feasibility of a conventional mechanical shearing as the edge preparation for tailored blanks is studyied. It reveals that fine shearing may not be the unique solution as it is generally accepted. To obtain the good shearing condition with a conventional mechanical shearing, experiments were carried out using Tahuchi method. The major parameters affecting a sheared contour are the clearance between upper blade and lower blade, and shear angle. The optimal shearing condition yields a very good straightness along the entire length of the cut, which gives a butt joint gap less than 10% of the base material thickness. The good cross section of sheared plane is also achieved in the optimal shearing condition such as a ratio of the shear face above 65%, a cross section's shear plane angle above 85%, little burr, which is providing finally good weld beads.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.63-70
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• 2022

Laser welding has attracted great attention as a tool used to join electrical steel coils. In this study, laser butt welding for electrical steel coil joining was conducted using the Taguchi method. It was found that structural defects such as void sand cracks were not produced in welds. This indicated that the performance of laser welding in electrical steel was excellent. According to the Taguchi analysis, the total welding quality index (TWQI) considering the bead height and roughness and tensile strength of the weld joint was almost evenly affected by laser power, welding speed, and focal position. The optimum welding conditions to maximize the TWQI were a laser power of 1220W, welding speed of 90 mm/s, and a focal position of 1mm. The regress model predicting the TWQI was also developed using the surface response method. We found that the model predicts measured values with an average error of 16.36%.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.42-44
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• 2006

A spacer grid assembly, which is an interconnected array of slotted grid straps and is welded at the intersections to form an egg crate structure, is one of the main structural components of the nuclear fuel assembly for pressurized water reactors(PWRs). The spacer grid assembly is structurally required to have enough buckling strength under various kinds of lateral loads acting on the nuclear fuel assembly so as to keep the nuclear fuel assembly straight. To meet this requirement, it is necessary to weld the welding parts carefully and precisely. In this study, a series of welding tests were carried out to find an optimum welding condition. After examining and analyzing the specimens welded from the welding conditions, a recommendable laser welding condition was selected for the KAERI designed Zircaloy spacer grid assembly.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.706-713
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• 2002

In the multi-pass welding of pressure vessels or ships, the mechanical touch sensor system is generally used together with a manipulator to measure the gap and depth of the narrow gap to perform seam tracking. Unfortunately, such mechanical touch sensors may commit measuring errors caused by the eterioration of the measuring device. An automation system of narrow gap multi-pass welding using a laser vision system which can track the seam line of narrow gap and which can control welding power has been developed. The joint profile of the narrow gap, with 250mm depth and 28mm width, can be captured by laser vision camera. The image is then processed for defining tracking positions of the torch during welding. Then, the real-time correction of lateral and vertical position of the torch can be done by the laser vision system. The adaptive control of welding conditions like welding Currents and welding speeds, can also be performed by the laser vision system, which cannot be done by conventional mechanical touch systems. The developed automation system will be adopted to reduce the idle time of welders, which happens frequently in conventional long welding processes, and to improve the reliability of the weld quality as well.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.45-51
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• 2002

In the multi-pass welding of pressure vessels or ships, the mechanical touch sensor system is generally used together with a manipulator to measure the gap and depth of the narrow gap to perform seam tracking. Unfortunately, such mechanical touch sensors may commit measuring errors caused by the deterioration of the measuring device. An automation system of narrow gap multi-pass welding using a laser vision system which can track the seam line of narrow gap and which can control welding power has been developed. The joint profile of the narrow gap, with 250mm depth and 28mm width, can be captured by laser vision camera. The image is then processed for defining tracking positions of the torch during welding. Then, the real-time correction of lateral and vertical position of the torch can be done by the laser vision system. The adaptive control of welding conditions like welding currents and welding speeds, can also be performed by the laser vision system, which cannot be done by conventional mechanical touch systems. The developed automation system will be adopted to reduce the idle time of welders, which happens frequently in conventional long welding processes, and to improve the reliability of the weld quality as well.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.53-58
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• 2005

We designed a weld monitoring system with UV and IR sensors using a embedded DSP controller for implementing a distribution system; running stand alone and communication with outside by industrial standard protocols. Also this system provided a USB port in order to be acquiring data in PC. The user interface program in PC visualized the IR and W data in time, frequency and state space. A correlation of IR and UV signals showed closely related to weld quality. A rapid change of geometry can be found through a moving average filter. And the average value of IR signal at an interval represented a welding width and depth. Through these results, we proposed a monitoring algorithm for a integer type DSP.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.573-578
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• 2000

Recently, Tailor Welded Blanks(TWB) is widely used in automotive industry since the transformation characteristics of its material can be changed. However, clearance between welding surface becomes the important factor which affect the quality of the laser weld, causing difficulties in preparing the sheet. The objective of this paper is to systematically evaluate the effects of previously presented fracture criterion and shearing condition on precise mechanical shearing simulation result. Also predict the optimum shearing condition, effect of shearing condition such as clearance and punch radius on the shear plane shape was evaluated.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.69-75
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• 2008

Spot welding which use the main process for side block production of stainless steel railway vehicle is legged behind in laser welding about a quality and productivity. Although the laser welding has many potential advantages such as low heat input and aspect ratio of weld bead, its application to a new structural component still is required many engineering data including mechanical properties such as tensile, fatigue strength, etc on. Therefore, experimental analysis was carried out to understand the fatigue phenomena of different thickness stainless steel overlap joining panels by Nd:YAG laser welding. The fatigue life curves were obtained through fatigue tests with the various levels of applied load. The fatigue life is related with the parameters such as gap size and penetration depth through experiment. As the results, tensile strength and fatigue life were proportional in heat input level and gap was identified the major factor for fatigue life. Also we could know that deferent a-ferrite content at HAZ depend on welding heat input was important factor to determine a formation of initial crack and total fatigue life cycle.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.605-610
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• 2008

Through welding fabrication, user can feel unsatisfaction of surface quality because of welded defects, Generally speaking, these are called weld defects. For checking these defects effectively without time loss effectively, weldability estimation system setup is an urgent thing for detecting whole specimen quality. In this study, by laser vision camera, catching a rawdata on welded specimen profiles, treating vision processing with these data, qualitative defects are estimated from getting these information at first. At the same time, for detecting quantitative defects, whole specimen weldability estimation is pursued by multifeature pattern recognition, which is a kind of fuzzy pattern recognition. For user friendly, by weldability estimation results are shown each profiles, final reports and visual graphics method, user can easily determined weldability. By applying these system to welding fabrication, these technologies are contribution to on-line weldability estimation.