Using infrared imaging to monitor and control welding
First Claim
1. A real time welding process for welding adjacent materials with a weld puddle formed between the materials, said method comprising the steps of bringing a welding apparatus and consumable and the materials together to form a weld puddle at the interface of the adjacent materials, producing relative motion between the welding apparatus and the materials thereby defining a front edge of the weld puddle, thermographically scanning the weld puddle and its adjacent heat affected zone from the front and producing image signals representative of a thermographic image of the weld, analyzing said puddle image signals to extract therefrom data indicative of irregularities in the welding procedure, and adjusting the welding procedure to reduce said irregularities.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The technique and arrangement of distributed, real time, intelligent control of welding including IR detection and measurement of process conditions, and controlling process parameters in view of a knowledge base including a predetermined rule set for interpreting the results of IR detection. The arrangement includes a multilevel communication scheme internally and between hardware nodes of the arrangement, and the data-driven scheduling of inference processes under direction of a semantic network.
232 Citations
105 Claims
- 1. A real time welding process for welding adjacent materials with a weld puddle formed between the materials, said method comprising the steps of bringing a welding apparatus and consumable and the materials together to form a weld puddle at the interface of the adjacent materials, producing relative motion between the welding apparatus and the materials thereby defining a front edge of the weld puddle, thermographically scanning the weld puddle and its adjacent heat affected zone from the front and producing image signals representative of a thermographic image of the weld, analyzing said puddle image signals to extract therefrom data indicative of irregularities in the welding procedure, and adjusting the welding procedure to reduce said irregularities.
- 26. A welding arrangement for controlling the welding of selected adjacent materials, said welding arrangement comprising infra-red detection means for observing radiation from the vicinity of the weld, said detection means effective for producing weld signals indicative of conditions detected with regard to welding operations, analysis means for receiving weld signals produced by said detection means, said analysis means effective for analyzing said weld signals to establish an analytical representation thereof, controller means for receiving the results of analysis from said analysis means, said controller means comprising memory means for holding a plurality of knowledge bases including a semantic network effective for defining the interrelationship of predetermined goals and subgoals descriptive of the accomplishment of welding operations, said memory means further including a rule base including predetermined rules enabling the development of inferences with respect to said analysis of said weld signals, knowledge mechanism means distributed over a plurality of nodes for implementing directions provided by said respective knowledge bases, and scheduling means for determining the performance of inferencing operations according to the rules in said rule base.
- 36. A method for welding selected adjacent materials with a weld puddle along the edges at which the materials abut and including a consumable, by producing relative motion between the materials and welding apparatus and observing radiation of heat from the leading edge of said weld puddle, by analyzing the pattern of said radiation, and by adjusting weld speed and current in view of the results of said analysis.
-
54. A welding apparatus for controlling the welding of selected materials and including an automated welding apparatus, said welding apparatus comprising:
-
image capturing means for capturing a heat image of at least a single selected zone of the weld region and producing a digital representation of said image; first high-speed information processing means connecting to said image capturing means to receive said digital representation for extracting from said representation at high speed a much smaller amount of data indicative of irregularities in the welding process, or the lack thereof; second artificial intelligence information processing means connecting to said first high-speed information processing means to receive said data indicative of irregularities in the welding process, or the lack thereof, for analyzing said data using the principles of artificial intelligence programming and for generating process control data; and third high-speed information processing means connecting to said second artificial intelligence information processing means to receive said process control data and connecting to said welding apparatus for operating said welding apparatus under the control of said process control data; whereby real time control of welding under artificial intelligence programming control is achieved. - View Dependent Claims (55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78)
-
-
79. A welding apparatus for controlling the welding of selected adjacent materials with a weld puddle along their interface formed from adjacent materials and a consumable comprising:
-
infrared detection means sensitive to thermal radiation in the vicinity of 10 to 11 microns where the puddle leading edge defects are visible attached to said automatic welder for observing infrared radiation from the leading edge of said weld puddle and generating data representing an image of said puddle; and information processing means connected to said infrared detection means for analyzing said data, and effective for establishing control strategies therefrom, and for operating said automatic welder in accordance with said control strategies.
-
-
80. A welding apparatus for welding with a weld puddle using a controllable welder device, said apparatus comprising:
-
image detection means for observing radiation emitted from said weld puddle and for generating data representing an image of said puddle; image data reduction means connected to said image detection means to receive said data representing an image, for analyzing said data to derive therefrom a reduced amount of data characterizing said image; image analysis means connecting to said image data reduction means to receive said reduced amount of data for analyzing said reduced amount of data to derive therefrom data characterizing the welding process and any irregularities therein; control strategy determination means connecting to said image analysis means to receive said data characterizing the welding process and any irregularities therein, for analyzing said data characterizing the welding process to derive therefrom data characterizing control strategies to govern the welding process; control implementation means connecting to said control strategy determination means to receive said data characterizing control strategies and also connecting to said controllable welder device for operating said welder, in accordance with said control strategies; and wherein said image data reduction means, image analysis means, control strategy determination means, and control implementation means are implemented as separate nodes, at least some of which nodes reside on independent data processors. - View Dependent Claims (81)
-
- 82. A welding method for welding materials along a seam established therebetween by the progress of a weld puddle including a consumable, said method comprising the steps of beginning welding operation, inspecting the geometry of said weld puddle in terms of protrusions along its leading edge, determining whether said inspection discloses any of a number of predetermined weld defects, and modifying weld process parameters in response to said determination.
- 91. A welder arrangement for welding a seam in materials and a consumable to be joined with a weld puddle traveling along said seam, said arrangement effective for establishing an arc of current between the arrangement and said weld puddle, said arc and said weld puddle substantially enclosed in a shield gas during welding operation to protect said weld from degradation during its establishment, said welder arrangement including detection means for detecting the infra-red geometry of the leading edge of said weld puddle, said geometry comprising the shape and separation of isotherms characterizing the heat in said weld puddle at the time of detection, said welder arrangement including analysis means for analyzing the features detected by said detection means, and including modifying means for modifying weld process parameters in response to said analysis.
-
101. A real time welding process for welding adjacent materials with a weld puddle formed between the materials, said method comprising the steps of bringing a welding apparatus that employs a gas shield to form and protect the puddle and the materials together into position to form the weld puddle at the interface of the adjacent materials, thermographically scanning the weld puddle and its adjacent heat affected zone and producing image signals representative of a thermographic image of the weld, analyzing said puddle image signals to extract therefrom data indicative of irregularities in the welding process, adjusting the welding procedure to reduce said irregularities, determining the dew point of the shield gas employed during welding, and aborting the welding operation when selected irregularities appear and the dew point of the gas indicates the shield gas is too humid.
-
102. A welding arrangement for controlling the welding of selected adjacent materials with a weld puddle along their interface, said welding arrangement comprising detection means for observing radiation from said weld puddle, said detection means effective for producing weld signals indicative of conditions detected with regard to welding operations, analysis means for receiving weld signals produced by said detection means, said analysis means effective for analyzing said weld signals to establish an analytical representation thereof, controller means for receiving the results of analysis from said analysis means, said controller means comprising memory means for holding a plurality of knowledge bases including a semantic network effective for defining the interrelationship of predetermined goals and subgoals descriptive of the accomplishment of the welding operation, said memory means further including a rule base including predetermined rules enabling the development of inferences with respect to said analysis of said weld signals, and knowledge mechanism means for implementing directions provided to said respective knowledge bases;
- and scheduling means for determining the performance of inferencing operations according to the rules in said rule base;
wherein said rule base halts the operation of welding, if the shield gas dew point indicates the shield gas is more humid than a predetermined limit.
- and scheduling means for determining the performance of inferencing operations according to the rules in said rule base;
-
103. A welding apparatus for controlling the welding of selected adjacent materials with a weld puddle forming at the point of welding and including an automated welding apparatus, said welding apparatus comprising:
-
image capturing means for capturing an image of at least a single selected zone of the weld puddle and producing a digital representation of said image; first high-speed information processing means connecting to said image capturing means to receive said digital representation for extracting form said representation at high speed a much smaller amount of data indicative of irregularities in the welding process, or the lack thereof; second artificial intelligence information processing means connecting to said first high-speed information processing means to receive said data indicative of irregularities in the welding process, or the lack thereof, for analyzing said data using the principles of artificial intelligence programming and for generating process control data; third high-speed information processing means connecting to said second artificial intelligence information processing means to receive said process control data and connecting to said welding apparatus for operating said welding apparatus under the control of said process control data; means for monitoring shield gas dew point during welding; means for aborting the welding operation when the dew point indicates the shielding gas is too humid; whereby real time control of welding under artificial intelligence programming control is achieved.
-
-
104. A welding method for welding materials along a seam established therebetween by the progress of a weld puddle, said method comprising the steps of beginning the welding operation, inspecting the geometry of said weld puddle in terms of protrusions along its leading edge, determining whether said inspection discloses any of a number of predetermined weld defects, modifying weld process parameters in response to said determination, and terminating welding if the dew point level of the shield gas employed in welding indicates that the shield gas humidity exceeds a predetermined maximum value.
-
105. A real time welding process for welding adjacent materials, said method comprising the steps of bringing a welding apparatus and the materials together into position for welding, thermographically scanning the heat affected zone, producing image signals representative of the thermographic image of the weld, analyzing said puddle image signals to extract therefrom data indicative of irregularities in the welding procedure, adjusting the welding procedure to reduce said irregularities, and storing the procedure variables in real time for later analysis as a record of the quality of the weld.
Specification