Weave Amplitude Control Sensor of GMAW : Development of Method and Equipment for Position Sensing in Welding with Electric Arc Signals (Report 2)

The robotic welding has been adopted positively improving the welding shops for the purpose of improving the welding efficiency and liberating operators from the severe working atmosphere. But for a large-size structure with thick plates like ship-building and every kind of plants manufacturing, the application of the are-welding robots is not established yet. The reason is assumed that the conventional arc-welding robots are not adoptable for multi-pass welding of thick plates whose grooves are not so accurate. Then, as one solution to this problem, the authors developed a new sensing system which detects the groove width and controls the wearing pattern, based on the former developed weld joint tracking technique, and incorporated it into a handy automatic welder with a welding condition programmer and a wearing actuator. By the utility testing, it is confirmed that this hands welding apparatus is applicable for butt joints whose groove width denotes maximum ±8 mm per 100 mm weld length and fillet joints in flat position and vertical position.