• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.18 no.9
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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.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.10
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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.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.203-205
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• 2007

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. And also, the spacer grid assembly is hydraulically required to have less hydraulic resistance of coolant. To meet this requirement, it is necessary to weld the welding parts carefully and precisely. In this study, weld qualities such as, weld bead size and spatter manufactured by various welders were compared and analyzed. And performance parameters such as impact strength of spacer grid and hydraulic resistance of coolant were also compared and analyzed. Comparison results show that the weld qualities could be improved by selecting the optimal welding condition and also improving the welding technique.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.49-56
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• 1997

Effect of process parameters on the quality of condenser discharge weld for coated sheet steels was discussed. The welding specimens were coated with pure Zn of 20/20 g/m2 in the production line. Direct measurements of welding parameters such as the discharge current, the pressures and the voltage drop across the electrodes were carried out with welding process monitoring system. High speed camera was also utilized to analyze the weld formation process. Test results indicated that the relation between weld strength and applied energy was stabilized at the acceptable welding heat input range. It was thought that the acceptable welding heat input should be redefined based on the monitored data because the calculated value of the welding heat input could hardly be utilized if the discharge condition was changed. Mechanical test results and high speed photographs showed that expulsion deteriorated the weld quality and the strength at the same time especially when the size of the spatter was large enough to carry the molten metal, which should form the nugget, out of the welding spot. Results also demonstrated that the discharge current should be applied at the appropriate time during the process because sufficient nugget was not produced if the time was deviated from the optimum range.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.59-65
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• 2005

The resistance spot welding is one of the most commonly used welding process for joining the sheet metal in automotive manufacturing process due to higher deposition rates and higher economy achieved. Control variables in the resistance spot welding for achieving high quality are welding current, welding force and welding time. Generally at the manufacturing scene, welding current Vs welding time lobe diagram is used to estimate weldability because controlling welding force is not practical due to economical reasons. However new automotive steel plates have been developed to make lightweight automobiles and to improve resistance against rusting. Also the weldability of these steel plates are worst than the existing steel plates because of changing bare metal and surface plating effect. In consequence of above mentioned reasons, it is necessary to use welding force to present the lobe diagram. In this study, we obtained the welding force Vs welding current lobe diagram for commonly used GA steel plate and found that the second order repression model of tensile shear strength was useful in reducing the number of experiments, and the indentation, and thickness change during welding were used as a response to estimate quantitatively expulsion.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.88-92
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• 2006

Laser-rotating arc hybrid welding was introduced by combining $CO_2$ laser and rotating gas metal arc welding. While the arc rotation enhances the weld pool motion, it reduces the undercut formation which is one of most critical weld defects in the conventional laser-arc hybrid welding. This research investigated the bead characteristics according to the welding parameters such as frequency of rotation, welding voltage, shielding gas composition and interspacing distance between laser and we. The welding parameters were selected to reduce spatter generation and ensure sound weld beads fur bead welding and butt welding with various joint gaps. Gap bridging ability was improved, such that the sound weld beads were achieved for butt joint with up to 2mm joint sap, with no adjustment of CTWD(Contact tip-to-workpiece distance) and electrode diameter.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.57-62
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• 2013

Magnesium has good castability and limited workability, so its products have been manufactured by almost casting processes. In this study, a pulsed Nd:YAG laser was used to butt-weld the sand casting magnesium alloys. And the effect of welding conditions such as peak power, pulse width, welding speed was evaluated in detail. As a result of this study, large underfill and plenty of spatter taken place under the conditions with high peak power. Thus, it is recommended to use low peak power and long pulse width to obtain good welds with deep penetration. It is also confirmed that the welding speed and pps(pulse per second) are directly connected at weld defects such as underfill, porosity.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.24-30
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• 2012

Laser welding by fiber laser accompanied by a lot of spatter and humping bead. This is because the deep and narrow keyhole usually form due to high beam quality. So the weld bead is formed defects, because the plasma jet with a high vapor pressure make the molten pool on keyhole wall scattered. For such a reason, unstable behavior of keyhole is difficult to monitor laser welding by using the laser induced plasma. Mostly, fiber laser welding of thick plates most be influenced by this effect. Therefore, fiber laser welding has been difficult to apply the sole. Thus, laser welding monitoring based on plasma measurements have much difficulty in measurements and analysis of signal. In this study, influence of the plasma emission signal according to welding speed and laser power in fiber laser welding analysed by using RMS and FFT analysis. We can verify that RMS value of the plasma emission signal changes with welding parameters in fiber laser welding, and aspect ratio greater than 1, the peak of FFT frequency had been moved in accordance with welding parameter.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.27-31
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• 2013

Magnesium alloy is used on parts of aircraft and electronic equipment because of the highest specific strength among the common metal materials. Recently, studies about appling magnesium alloy sheet to automotive bodies are on the increase rapidly. For application to automotive bodies, researches about characteristics of resistance spot welding of magnesium alloy sheet are essential. Magnesium alloy has low boiling point, so getting sound bead shape is difficult when appling varies welding processes. Resistance spot welding is also particular about setting optimum welding conditions because of spatter generation, pores and cracks occurrence in nugget. And life of electrodes is very short because of alloying with copper that main material of electrodes. This requires frequent dressing and replacement of electrodes and decrease in productivity of resistance spot welding on magnesium alloy. Therefore in this study, for effective analysis of changes in tensile shear load and nugget size during electrode life test, evaluate detail characteristics of resistance spot welding on magnesium alloy sheet using dome type electrode.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.48-54
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• 2016

The use of Zn coated steel has increased in the automotive industry due to its excellent corrosion resistance. Conventionally the BIW(body-in-white) structure and the hang-on parts have been made of Zn coated steel and more recently Zn coated steel began to be applied in the chassis parts. During gas metal arc (GMA) welding of the chassis part, lap fillet joint used to be adopted but spatter generation and porosities are most important concerns. In the industrial applications, an intentional joint gap was made to avoid the weld defects but it is not easy to control the size of joint gap. In this research, gas tungsten arc (GTA) is combined with GMA welding where GTA precedes GMA. As pulsed arc was adopted as GMA, GTA was oscillated along the longitudinal direction by pulsing GMA, but the arc oscillation did not disturb the molten droplet transfer of GMA welding. By increasing the distance between GTA and GMA, the length of weld pool increased and porosity could be reduced. Moreover porosity in the welds was fully removed when the distance between two arcs was 15 mm.