Real-time quality monitoring tool development for remote laser welding ofsheet metal assemblies in automotive applications

Individual stamped sheet metal components need to be joined to create sheet metal assemblies
used in a car. Powerful laser light delivered by a robot is used to quickly weld these assemblies by
making dozens of individual welds within a few minutes. For economical production, it is essential
to minimize the total production cycle time. At the same time, high-quality welds must be
produced. Undetected defective weld joints would lead to severe penalties if delivered to the
company’s customer. Currently, all assemblies must be manually inspected. An automated realtime
laser weld monitoring system is being investigated. The system monitors the intensity of the
radiation emitted at the weld. It has been found that the system is not meeting the company’s
requirements. The proposed project intends to identify the defects that need to be detected, design
experiments where defects are reproduced artificially, and correlate these with the observations of
the monitoring system.

Faculty Supervisor:

Gene Zak

Student:

Partner:

Van-Rob Inc

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Queen's University

Program: