CAMERA BASED PROCESS MONITORING OF THE CO CO2 AND ND:YAG LASER WELDINGPROCESS: EXPERIENCES FROM APPLICATIONS IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

摘要

Only continuous supervision of themanufacturing process can guarantee the high demandson the quality of the produced parts. In particular thisis a fact in laser materials processing. It is for thisreason, that process monitoring systems become moreand more standard devices in modern automotive laserapplications. The basis for reliable on-line processmonitoring systems are significant indicators for theinstantaneous condition of the interaction zone and/orneighbouring areas. Depending on the application it isessential to select the most reliable systemconfiguration.As presented in former ICALEO conferences, one ofthe most promising basis for reliable processmonitoring systems is the use of a camera as sensor toextract as much information as possible from theinteraction zone between the laser and the workpiece.Precitec Optronik GmbH (former JURCAOptoelektronik GmbH) is following this strategy sinceseveral years now and was very successful inintegrating camera based monitoring system into theproduction line of the automotive industry.This paper will describe the different systemconfigurations for CO2 and Nd:YAG applications withregards to the sensor hardware and the imageprocessing algorithms and will present examples fromautomotive industry.