A tier one automotive supplier is using robotic cells to monitor the profiles of the signature of key welding patterns on seats, as a way to reduce need for visual checks while boosting quality.
In-process monitoring of welding operations to reduce the amount of destructive testing is more than a dream for one automobile seat manufacturer. Engineers at this Tier One supplier are looking at robotic cells that monitor the profiles of the signatures of key welding parameters. They hope that the ability to measure process variation reliably will allow them to control current, voltage, wire feed speed and gas flow more tightly and to test seats twice a week instead of once a day.
"At the end of the day, you really don't know the quality of the weld until you section it and look at grain structures or put it through shear and pull testing," says Mike Sharpe, product manager at Fanuc Robotics North America Inc. (Rochester Hills, MI), the builder supplying the welding cells. "Testing seats is expensive because you ruin a $40 to $100 assembly each time that you do it."