The Method to Inspect Spot Welding Without Coulant and a Consideration of Cyber-Physical System by Spot Welding Automatic Inspection System

Abstract

The demand has now arisen for nondestructive methods allowing spot welding points to be automatically and swiftly inspected with high accuracy. We have developed a spot welding inspection robot integrating Matrixeye^TM and robot control techniques, which makes it possible to adjust the tilt angle of the ultrasonic probe. In this paper, we introduce this robot system and method to inspect spot welding without couplant, which enables to reduce the inspection time and to eliminate set-up operation to wipe out couplant. Also, we suggest a cyber-physical system by the spot welding automatic inspection system, which can contribute to improve the quality of the spot welding process.