Monitoring of Varying Joint Gap Width during Laser Beam Welding by a Dual Vision and Spectroscopic Sensing System

A vision and spectroscopic system for estimation of the joint gap width in autogenous laser beam butt welding is presented. Variations in joint gap width can introduce imperfections in the butt joint seam, which in turn influence fatigue life and structural integrity. The aim of the monitoring approach explored here is to acquire sufficiently robust process data to be used to guide post inspection activities and/or to enable feedback control for a decreased process variability. The dual-sensing approach includes a calibrated CMOS camera and a miniature spectrometer integrated with a laser beam tool. The camera system includes LED illumination and matching optical filters and captures images of the area in front of the melt pool in order to estimate the joint gap width from the information in the image. The intensity of different spectral lines acquired by the spectrometer has been investigated and the correlation between the intensity of representative lines and the joint gap width has been studied. Welding experiments have been conducted using a 6 kW fiber laser. Results from both systems are promising, the camera system is able to give good estimations of the joint gap width, and good correlations between the signal from the spectrometer and the joint gap width have been found. However, developments of the camera setup and vision algorithm can further improve the joint gap estimations and more experimental work is needed in order to evaluate the robustness of the systems.