Product manufacturers continually strive to find ways to robotically weld parts faster while maintaining consistent, high-quality welds. Traditional touch-sensing/seam-finding methods required the robot to weave across the weld joint, which leads to long cycle times, slow travel speeds and made such technologies only feasible for material thicknesses greater than 3 mm. It is the aim of the present paper to introduce new 3D laser seam-tracking technology. The high sensitivity allows robots to weld sheet metal parts with a with characteristically variable part fit-up examples. With an adaptive welding feature, production rates can be increased. When the joint gap is encountered, the robot slows its speed. But the average overall travel speed can be kept faster, as the robot controller quickly respond by varying travel speed, weld settings (such as current and voltage), or even wire position in the joint on the fly in order to provide additional fill capability for the joint gap. These conditions can be set up in a table on the robot pendant to correspond with anticipated gap conditions. The tracking consists of laser diodes on the tracker package, which projects a line of light on the workpiece and a high-power camera mounted at an angle relative to the projected line, which detects both the top plate and the bottom plate location via the distortion. The camera's software interprets the depth of the joint line in the camera's field of view, and can provide feedback on the gap of a lap joint by subtracting the known material thickness of the top plate. The technology is used to produce automotive frame components, exhaust systems, and food industry equipment such as sinks and appliances. In addition to service as a welding aid for thinner-gage materials like aluminum and sheet metal the welding of fuel tanks, cylinders and other contoured vessels is carried out.


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    Titel :

    Improve welding quality with 3D laser seam-tracking


    Beteiligte:

    Erschienen in:

    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2006


    Format / Umfang :

    3 Seiten, 2 Bilder



    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Print


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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