HYBRID WELDS Coaxial Vision Monitoring of LBW/GMAW Hybrid Welding Process

Effective monitoring and control of the hybrid laser/gas metal arc welding process quality with an economical sensor system is important for manufacturing applications This importance is due to occasional and unexpected variations in weld part fit up, location or other characteristics that may occur In this study, a coaxial vision system for the hybrid process monitoring was integrated from a relatively inexpensive industrial vision system and a personal computer (PC) based gas metal arc welding (GMAW) arc data process monitoring system to monitor the process quality in real time The stand alone vision system captured processed and tested images of the weld pool and hybrid process It also communicated the test results to the arc data process monitoring computer which simultaneously collected the electrical characteristics of a welding arc including voltage, current and wire feed speed Software was developed to input user preferences, output monitoring results and coordinate the operation of the hardware Coaxial vision images and image processing results demonstrated the effectiveness of the system for the hybrid process monitoring