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Compact visual control system for aligning and tracking narrow butt seams with CO2 gas-shielded arc welding

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Abstract

In this paper, a visual control system is proposed to locate the start welding position and track the narrow butt welding seam in container manufacturing. It estimates the error between the welding torch and the welding seam with a camera and a panel computer. It adjusts the torch’s position via a stepper motor to eliminate the error. A decision controller with three gates is designed to decide the working procedure. Feature extraction algorithms are designed according to the seams and pre-weld spots. The seam line and the position of the pre-weld spot are detected to locate the start welding position in initial aligning. Then the torch is aligned to the seam. In the welding stage, the reference feature is determined with many frames of images based on their statistical property. The current estimated feature is checked to ensure only normal features to be used for welding seam tracking. Experiments are well conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system and methods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bei**g, 100190, China

    De Xu, Zaojun Fang & Min Tan

  2. Department of Automation, Hebei University of Technology, Tian**, 300130, China

    Haiyong Chen

  3. Intelligent Equipment and Control Technology Institute, Dongfang Electric Corporation R&D Center, Chengdu, 611731, China

    Zhiguo Yan

Authors
  1. De Xu
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  2. Zaojun Fang
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  3. Haiyong Chen
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  4. Zhiguo Yan
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  5. Min Tan
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Correspondence to De Xu.

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Xu, D., Fang, Z., Chen, H. et al. Compact visual control system for aligning and tracking narrow butt seams with CO2 gas-shielded arc welding. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 62, 1157–1167 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-011-3873-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-011-3873-6

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