Instructions for Preparing Paper 14Pt, Bold s1

The First East Asia Symposium of Welding and Joining ( 1st EAST-WJ), Shanghai, China

Image Processing for Automated Robotic Welding 16pt, bold

Prof. Dr. Peter Seyffarth,Dipl.-Ing. Rainer Gaede 12pt, Arial

Ingenieurtechnik und Maschinenbau GmbH Rostock/Germany Industriestr. 8, D-18069 Rostock.Tel. +49-381-793-450 Email:[email protected]  12pt, times itali

Extended Abstract12pt, Arial bold

The construction of seagoing ships needs a lot of micro panels with maximal dimensions up to 16 x 4 m. About 2000 – 2300 micro panels with different sizes and about 20 – 25 various kinds of design are to weld for a medium size containership from 1700 – 2400 TEU. These are fillet welds mainly between stiffeners and the panel plate. There are two different techniques to make panels: For very long and parallel stiffeners are weld gantries in use for both side fillet welding, but for longitudinal and transversal stiffeners robotic welding is mainly used. Up to now the welding robot is linked and programmed by the CAD/CAM system of the yard. This needs the offline programming more or less weeks before production and in this time the design of the panels can change. It is also an organizational problem to have the right CAD-program at the right time on the welding robot and to guarantee a flexible production process independent of the size and design of the micro panel.

Therefore a way out is the flexible image processing. The new developed by IMG and used by WADAN yards MTW image processing system for welding robots delivers a very fast automatically generated program. A laser line scanner with a scanning rate of 1 m/sec. and a fast working calculation unit gives a three-dimensional picture in less than 3 minutes all over the 16 x 4 m panel. After the shake hand process between the image processing system and the robot programming system the accuracy of the robotic positioning is ± 0,5 mm. This new developed 3-dimensional geometrically recognizing and robot programming system allows a very fast and flexible production system for micro panels without any link to the central computer aided yard system. 12pt, Times

Keywords (12pt, Arial bold): Imagine Processing, Robotic Welding 12pt, Times