Visual sensing and penetration control in aluminum alloy pulsed GTA welding

In this paper, visual sensing and penetration control in aluminum (Al) alloy pulse gas tungsten arc welding were researched. Firstly, a three-optical-route visual sensor was designed. The sensor can capture the weld pool from three directions at the same time. After analyzing the influences of different factors on weld pool image, serials of clear and stable weld pool images were obtained. Then, image processing technologies were developed to compute back topside weld pool geometry parameters. Wavelet transform and Canny operator were synthesized to get all edges in the weld pool image. After noise removal and calibration, the breaking edges of weld pool were obtained, and then piecewise curve fitting based on polynomial function were used to recover the whole weld pool edge. Lastly, proportional-integral-differential and a multiplex controller were designed to control penetration in welding process. Experiments proved that visual-based penetration control can insure welding quality well from weld pool width and reinforcement.