• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.90-99
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• 1999

Significant portion of the total manufacturing time for a pipe fabrication process is spent on the welding following primary machining and fit-up processes. To achieve a reliable weld bead appearance, automatic seam tracking and adaptive control to fill the groove are urgently needed. For the seam tracking in welding processes, the vision sensors have been successfully applied. However, the adaptive filling control of the multi-torches system for the appropriate welded area has not been implemented in the area of SAW(submerged arc welding) by now. The term adaptive control is often used to describe recent advances in welding process control by strictly this only applies to a system which is able to cope with dynamic changes in system performance. In welding applications, the term adaptive control may not imply the conventional control theory definition but may be used in the more descriptive sense to explain the need for the process to adapt to the changing welding conditions. This paper proposed various types of methodologies for obtaining a good bead appearance based on multi-torches welding system with the vision system in SAW. The methodologies for adaptive filling control used welding current/voltage, arc voltage/welding current/wire feed speed combination and welding speed by using vision sensor. It was shown that the algorithm for welding current/voltage combination and welding speed revealed sound weld bead appearance compared with that of voltage/current combination.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.584-587
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• 2002

A vision sensor measure range data using laser light source. This sensor generally use patterned laser which shaped single line. But this vision sensor cannot satisfy new trend which needs laster and more precise processing. The sensor's sampling rate increases as reduced image processing time. However, the sampling rate can not over 30fps, because a camera has mechanical sampling limit. If we use multi line laser pattern, we will measure multi range data in one image. In the case of using same sampling rate camera, number of 2D range data profile in one second is directly proportional to laser line's number. For example, the vision sensor using 5 laser lines can sample 150 profiles per second in best condition.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.51-56
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• 2002

The weld seam tracking system for arc welding process uses various kinds of sensors such as arc sensor, vision sensor, laser displacement sensor 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 I-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 was determined far 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 ㎜, and it was revealed that the system has excellent seam tracking ability for the I-butt joint of sheet metal.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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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...

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.447-457
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• 2019

The intelligent sensory system is required to ensure the accurate welding performance. This paper describes the development of an intelligent vision sensor for the robotic laser welding. The sensor system includes a PC based vision camera and a stripe-type laser diode. A set of robust image processing algorithms are implemented. The laser-stripe sensor can measure the profile of the welding object and obtain the seam line. Moreover, the working distance of the sensor can be changed and other configuration is adjusted accordingly. The robot, the seam tracking system, and CW Nd:YAG laser are used for the laser welding robot system. The simple and efficient control scheme of the whole system is also presented. The profile measurement and the seam tracking experiments were carried out to validate the operation of the system.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.303-304
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• 2001

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.43-49
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• 2004

In this study, a visual sensor system which can detect I-butt weld joint with height variation and includes a seam tracking algorithm was investigated. Three-dimensional position of an object can be acquired by using the method of distance measurement, i.e., an optical trigonometry which results from the spatial relations between the camera, the object and the structured light by a visible laser. Effects of laser intensity and iris number for the image quality as well as object material were investigated for the optical system design. For the image processing, a region of interest is defined from the whole image and a line image of laser is drew by using the gray level difference in the image. From the drew laser line, the weld joint can be recognized in searching the biggest point position calculated from the central difference method. Through a series of welding experiments, a good tracking performance was confirmed under GMA welding.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.18 no.4
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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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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2016

The Gas Metal Arc(GMA) welding, called Metal Inert Gas(MIG) welding, has been an important component in manufacturing industries. A key technology for robotic welding processes is seam tracking system, which is critical to improve the welding quality and welding capacities. The objectives of this study were to develop the intelligent and cost-effective algorithms for image processing in GMA welding which based on the laser vision sensor. Welding images were captured from the CCD camera and then processed by the proposed algorithm to track the weld joint location. The proposed algorithms that commonly used at the present stage were verified and compared to obtain the optimal one for each step in image processing. Finally, validity of the proposed algorithms was examined by using weld seam images obtained with different welding environments for image processing. The results proved that the proposed algorithm was quite excellent in getting rid of the variable noises to extract the feature points and centerline for seam tracking in GMA welding and could be employed for general industrial application.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.593-596
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• 1996

A seam tracking control system with a tool position control and a camera orientation control, has been developed here. For the camera orientation contro, SOFNN was used to learn the expert control signal. The SOFNN algorithm can adjust the fuzzy set parameters and determine the fuzzy logic structure.