Pressure vessels are critical equipment in industries such as petrochemicals, energy, and power, where welding quality directly determines equipment safety and service life. Since pressure vessel weld seams often involve thick plate welding and large workpiece sizes, traditional manual welding or programmed robotic welding struggles to meet high precision and consistency requirements. Today, let's explore how the pressure vessel industry improves quality through weld seam tracking systems.
Advantages of Weld Seam Tracking Systems
Weld seam tracking systems ensure welding accuracy and consistency by scanning and adjusting the welding trajectory in real time. The main advantages include:
- Real-time Detection and Automatic Correction: Using laser vision sensors, the system scans the weld seam profile in real time, accurately identifies the weld position and shape, and adjusts the welding torch trajectory accordingly to ensure welding precision.
- Increased Welding Efficiency: Reduces the time workers spend on repeated teaching, automatically identifies weld deviations, and quickly corrects them, improving production efficiency.
- Improved Welding Quality: Prevents welding defects caused by weld seam deviation or torch misalignment, ensuring welding quality and seam consistency.
- Adaptability to Complex Conditions: Effectively addresses issues such as heat deformation and assembly deviations during welding, ensuring stable operation under complex pressure vessel welding conditions.
Challenges in Pressure Vessel Welding
Pressure vessel welding involves the following difficulties:
- Large Weld Seam Sizes: Pressure vessels often have various types of weld seams, including longitudinal seams, circumferential seams, and joint welds, some of which are quite long.
- Challenges of Thick Plate Welding: Since pressure vessels often use thick steel plates, the high heat input during welding can easily cause deformation and cracks.
- Assembly Tolerances: Due to dimensional deviations during pressure vessel assembly, traditional programmed welding robots cannot compensate for these deviations.
- High Welding Quality Requirements: As pressure vessels are pressurized equipment, their weld seams must meet strict safety and quality standards, where any defect could lead to severe safety risks.
Weld Navigator Solutions
With the launch of the Weld Navigator weld seam tracking system, a specialized solution has been developed for the pressure vessel industry:
- Intelligent Path Correction: Captures weld seam trajectories in real time, using intelligent algorithms to automatically correct the welding torch trajectory and minimize weld deviation.
- High-Precision Laser Sensors: Utilizing high-precision laser sensors for micron-level weld seam detection, ensuring welding quality.
- Compatibility with Various Equipment: Adaptable to over 40 brands of robots, including ABB, Fanuc, Yaskawa, KUKA, Borunte, and EFORT, as well as various specialized welding machines.
- Welding Process Monitoring: Integrates weld seam tracking with molten pool monitoring, enabling welders to work in safer conditions while remotely monitoring the welding process and detecting anomalies in real time.
Application Case
In a pressure vessel manufacturing project, the Weld Navigator weld seam tracking system was used for thick-walled pressure vessel circumferential seam welding. It effectively addressed issues such as large workpiece sizes and complex weld seam trajectories, which previously led to weld seam deviations and welding deformations. By implementing the tracking system, the sensor accurately identified weld seam positions and made real-time corrections, ensuring that the welding trajectory remained on the correct path. This significantly improved product qualification rates and production efficiency.
With its high precision and intelligent features, the Weld Navigator laser weld seam tracking system has become an effective tool for welding automation upgrades in the pressure vessel industry. Through real-time weld seam tracking and intelligent correction, the system enhances welding quality, reduces manual intervention, and provides pressure vessel manufacturers with a more efficient and stable solution.
