Process control of laser conduction welding by thermal imaging measurement with a color camera

Fabrice Bardin, Stephen Morgan, Stewart Williams, Roy McBride, Andrew J. Moore, J. D C Jones, Duncan P. Hand

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Conduction welding offers an alternative to keyhole welding. Compared with keyhole welding, it is an intrinsically stable process because vaporization phenomena are minimal. However, as with keyhole welding, an on-line process-monitoring system is advantageous for quality assurance to maintain the required penetration depth, which in conduction welding is more sensitive to changes in heat sinking. The maximum penetration is obtained when the surface temperature is just below the boiling point, and so we normally wish to maintain the temperature at this level. We describe a two-color optical system that we have developed for real-time temperature profile measurement of the conduction weld pool. The key feature of the system is the use of a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor standard color camera leading to a simplified low-cost optical setup. We present and discuss the real-time temperature measurement and control performance of the system when a defocused beam from a high power Nd:YAG laser is used on 5 mm thick stainless steel workpieces. © 2005 Optical Society of America.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)6841-6848
Number of pages8
JournalApplied Optics
Volume44
Issue number32
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Nov 2005

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