State Of Art in Ultrasonic Spotweld Testing - Offline Inline - New Materials and Coatings

摘要

The utilisability of ultrasonic testing particularly for new materials and coating in automotive industry is a major point of interest for improved quality management of car bodies. The ultrasonic testing instruments swi-100x and UT Mate SW for the manual inspection of resistant welded spots provide highest reliability of test results in a dimension of more than 350 devices in the market at DaimlerChrysler, BMW, VW, AUDI, PORSCHE and many suppliers. The further development of the new evaluation algorithm controls the optimised position of the probe and monitors the best incidence of sound in the material. The spotweld software permits temporarily storage of all Ascans for evaluation of the best A-scan within an adjustable time period - online and enables explicit evaluation of intermediate echos with tunable evaluation thresholds. Therefore the newest version of the spotweld software provides ideal condition for testing of unequal and 3 plate combinations as well as high strength steels. The evaluation algorithm provides the ability for manual testing of high strength steels and new coatings e.g. TRIP; USIBOR. The self-developed inline ultrasonic testing system SPOTline is used for inspection and process control of resistant spot weldings. SPOTline provides with directly into the welding tong integrated ultrasonic sensors a 100% inspection during the welding process. The through transmission and pulse echo signals will be collected, stored and evaluated by means of fuzzy-logic and neuronal network technic. The results will be transmitted online from the spotline-client in the sql-data-base of the server for processing. World-wide SPOTline is the only ultrasonic inspection system, which is working under real production conditions in a network of welding robots. Test with 2 and 3 plates, high strength steels and all coatings demonstrate the accurately identification of discrepant welds.