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GSI – Gesellschaft für Schweißtechnik international mbH
SLV – Schweißtechnische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalten
Schweißtechnik - WeiterbildungschweißenSchweißtechnik Indrustrie

Quality assurance during resistance spot welding

Within the framework of research projects and industrial investigations, investigations were conducted into innovative devices for assuring the quality during resistance spot welding. Devices from the fields of testing, monitoring and regulating were taken into account in this respect. The regulating devices (i.e. welding controllers) which could intervene in the welding process in an adaptive way were connected to a robot welding gun from ARO. The monitoring devices which made a statement about the quality of the weld immediately after the conclusion of the welding process were connected to another robot gun from DÜRING. This permitted the parallel investigation of the device groups. Typical cases arising in practice were taken into consideration as disturbing variables which had to be corrected or recognised. These included, for example, shunts (see the figure), poor fit-ups, electrode force fluctuations etc. The results until now showed that, practically without exception, the utilisation of regulators offered advantages over conventional controllers with regard to the attainable welding quality.

The automobile industry was so interested in the complex of subjects that the investigation of special terms of reference was commissioned as a consultancy service. In this respect, the requirements of the participating partners were coordinated, the tests were performed and the results were processed and presented in a corresponding form (amongst other goals) in order to support any forthcoming investment decisions. Of course, these results were available to the commissioning firms only - after all, this constituted confidential contractual research. The results of the publicly promoted research project were available in the middle of 2005.