Recognizing Faults and Optimizing Production

Inspecting Welded Seams in Automotive Bodywork Statement of Task Bronze wire MIG welding systems are used in the bodywork area at AUDI AG to join galvanized high-alloy sheet metal and stainless steel sheet metal. The weld is applied to an elongated slot in the upper sheet and thus joins the upper and lower sheets together. An image processing system is required to inspect the seams to guarantee product quality. The inspection criteria for the seam include presence, position, detection of excessive height, holes, surface pores, undercuts and gaps in the filler metal. Benefit Until the installation of the VIROwsi inspection system, personnel was required to manually inspect the seams. The automated inspection system now digitizes the sur-face of the weld seam in three dimensions and analyses the data using the inspection criteria. VIROwsi inspects the soldered seams automatically, simplifies the process of recognizing faults, and thus contributes to optimization of the production process. This in turn enables production costs to be reduced. Implementation To simplify the plant layout, VIROwsi is installed directly after the welding process. The sensor is moved at a speed of 6 m/min. along the seam. The 3D surface of the weld is digitized using laser triangulation. The speed of the robot is selected to facilitate reliable detection of faults smaller than 1 millimeter. The inspection results are processed in the computer, logged, presen-ted visually and transferred to the robot controller. The log file ensures compliance with the documentation requirements.

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