This paper presents the overview of a strategy for integrating the gas metal arc welding process into the procedures of designing a welded component via CAD and generating a robot program for executing the welding task. Such strategy could be interpreted as a technique of Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) applied to robotic welding. The proposed strategy includes three main parts: (a) weld design and generation of welding parameters; (b) off-line programming of the robot path; and (c) on-line control. This strategy was implemented partially in a commercial PC CAD system. The resulting software requires from the user geometrical information about the weld beads and outputs welding parameters that are likely to produce the required weld quality and a robot program which is supposed to guide the robot through the welding path. In order to make the strategy effective, monitoring and on-line tuning of the welding process and control of the alignment between the robot path and the joint were also implemented. Initial results indicate the potential of the proposed strategy for solving the problems normally found when using off-line programming in robotic arc welding.
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