Effects of Optical Emissions from Weld Arcs on the Performance of Welding Robot Vision Systems
by
A. L. Lenef
C. S. Gardner
Department of Electrical Engineering
Abstract
Many arc welding robots employ one-pass vision systems which use a laser projection and optical triangulation technique for seam tracking. The seam tracking accuracy of these arc welding robots can be adversely affected by the intense optical emissions produced by the weld arc. Optical filtering is generally employed to restrict the spectral bandwidth of these emissions. In this paper, we present absolute intensity measurements of weld arc spectra at visible and near IR wavelengths using Ar-O2 shield gas with solid wire and CO2 shield gas with flux cored wire. By simulating the effect of an interference filter on the weld arc emissions, these measurements can be used to calculate estimates of the stray arc light visible to a seam tracking camera. These results are useful in determining the optimum wavelength, laser power, and optical filter bandwidth for a particular welding application.
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