Discrete part manufacturers using robotic arc welding cells often have several more geographically distributed plants than welding experts. This ratio often leads to costly downtimes due to both logistic and communication deficiencies between weld engineers and the production site. The ability for engineers to remotely access welding cells from their home office to anywhere in the world can yield several benefits. These include quicker response time to problems, improved weld quality, increased production line reliability, and reduced travel time for weld engineers. We describe the NIST testbed technology and infrastructure for remote manufacturing that has been applied and demonstrated on a robotic welding cell where valuable process data can be made available to remotely located engineers in real-time or near real-time. Remote access to cell information is made possible by open-architecture interfaces that tie the robot controller, weld controller, and cell controller together. The welding cell allows remote access through the internet via: an audio/video system for communicating with the operator, a pan/tilt/zoom camera inside the welding cell for viewing the cell in operation and inspecting parts after a weld, a real-time display for welding process data, a web-based graphic simulation of the robot arm driven by real-time motion commands, and an intelligent monitoring system with an internet accessible welding database. The cell incorporates multiple weld monitoring systems with data logging capability to capture process variables during a weld.
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