In ship building welding in the dock area constitutes a highly demanding challenge involving welding on large structures in varying welding positions, and having varying and potentially large root gaps. Today, either manual welding or mechanised welding using a welding tractor is the typical production method. Manual welding is of course very labour intensive and also causing an unfavourable working environment whereas mechanised welding using e.g. a rail based tractor demands careful and troublesome alignment of the guiding rails for the vehicle. In the present paper a new welding tractor is presented that is kept in place on a steel structure by magnetic wheels, and that based on a specially designed dual-beam laser sensor is capable of automatically following the weldingjoint without preplaced rails. Furthermore, the welding process may be adaptively controlled based on sensor input regarding the joint geometry. The welding carriage system described above is developed for assembly welding of prefabricated blocks to produce huge container carriers, reefer vessels etc. in the dock area of ship yards. The main features of the equipment are: All position welding capability. By use of magnetic wheels, the welding carriage will drive directly on the item to be welded, hence no rails are needed. This reduces costs significantly, as current rail based systems are costly in three ways. They are expensive to buy, it is time consuming (expensive) to position rails prior to use, and they are fragile and they require a lot of expensive repair. Automatic positioning system. A laser sensor mounted on the carriage continuously scans the joint to be welded. Based on this sensor feedback, the carriage automatically tracks the joint and a manipulator system mounted on the carriage continuously positions the welding torch accurately in the groove. No manual positional adjustments are needed during welding. Adaptive welding parameter control The laser sensor provides continuous exact measurements of the joint geometry. This information is fed to a welding process control system partly based on neural network technology. Once the process control system is trained, the system continuously adjusts all relevant welding parameters, enabling the carriage to produce quality welds despite significant variations in joint geometry. Apart from the regular improvement of productivity gained by automation, combining the above features result in an even higher increase of productivity due to shorter set up and take down time. As the robot is more flexible, it can be used for more applications and can be used in harder to reach places. When the robot is automatically controlling the welding the need for highly skilled workers is loosened


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    Titel :

    Self-attaching and self-guided welding tractor for adaptive welding in the dock area


    Weitere Titelangaben:

    Selbständig haftender und sich selbst führender Schweißtraktor für das adaptive Schweißen im Dockbereich


    Beteiligte:


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2008


    Format / Umfang :

    8 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 9 Quellen



    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Konferenz)


    Format :

    Print


    Sprache :

    Englisch






    Repair of tractor parts by welding

    Cunningham, J.A. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1942


    RESISTANCE WELDING IN THE TRACTOR INDUSTRY

    Mallett, E. A. | SAE Technical Papers | 1937


    Attaching strain gages by ultrasonic plastic welding

    Sheppard, A. T. / Silbert, L. | NTRS | 1977