Automotive manufacturing is a very demanding industry for factory automation because of the extremely high volumes per year which results in short cycle times, minimum preventative maintenance and a need to have a high uptime. 

Laser vision systems have been used for years, mainly in conjunction with robots, to do seam finding and seam tracking on components ranging from chassis to body. 

More recently, laser vision systems are being used for real time process control and measurement of welding processes ranging from arc to laser. 

Seam finding on a fire suppress and cannister

The need to compensate for Body-In-White variation has led many manufacturers to utilize some type of sensor technology. Welds joints requiring this type of compensation include the A-Pillar and enclosure reinforcements. 

Servo-Robot offers two types of laser vision based seam finders capable of quickly locating the weld joint and then providing offsets to any robot used. In addition, adaptive welding can be performed based on pre-setup weld schedules. Seam finding reduces quality problems with miss-located welds and increases productivity by helping optimize the welding process.

Seam tracking of tailor welded blanks

Most of these blanks are made with dedicated automated machines laser welding at speeds up to 14 meters/minute. The most common joints have been straight line in the past, but now many parts are being designed with non linear and curvi-linear joints.  In addition, some parts consist of up to 5 individual blanks. 

All of these trends, along with the move to robotics for increased flexibility, means the need for a tracking system is becoming a requirement to handle the variation coming from the blank edges and the fixturing.

Weld inspection of tailor welded blanks

The growth of tailored welded blanks is running at a 10% rate per year. More of these blanks consist of multiple seams with some having a 2D contour. This is putting more pressure on manual inspection with respect to the ability to satisfactorily find defects at the high production rates present. 

An alternative to manual inspection is the use of laser vision cameras for the real time process monitoring. This system will measure the weld size as well as identify and locate defects such as porosity or undercut at speeds exceeding 10 meters/minute.