Abstract
Traditionally fusion welding of manufactured components and quality control inspection of such welds are distinctly separate processes in the supply chain, which ultimately limit productivity, throughput and increase re-work. The concept of combining both of these practices directly at the point of manufacture offers the potential to produce superior, globally-efficient fabrications. This paper presents the results of a study investigating such a strategy, where a multi-pass weld is autonomously deposited and, in parallel, an autonomous inspection is deployed for real-time Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE). A real-time sector scan is implemented after each of 21 weld passes and in three inspection positions, i.e., the first position is 50 mm from the weld start, the second being in the center of the weld length and the last is 50 mm distance to the weld endpoint. Only in the second position, a intentionally embedded defect, a tungsten rod, is introduced into the multi-pass weld to allow subsequent in-process calibration and verification. Based on the phased array inspection results, the tungsten rod is successfully detected in the real-time NDE of the deposited position. Furthermore, the reflection due to the partially filled groove is captured during the inspection of the filling passes.
How to Cite:
Javadi, Y. ., Macleod, C. ., Lines, D. ., Vasilev, M. ., Mohseni, E. ., Foster, E. ., Qiu, Z. ., Vithanage, R. ., Zimermann, R. ., Loukas, C. ., Pierce, G. . & Gachagan, A. ., (2019) “In-process inspection of multi-pass robotic welding”, Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation .
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