TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 372/1988
P Kuy and R R Krishnan
Scope
To confirm the acceptability of resistance spot welds a variety of in-process monitoring systems have been developed which measure an individual parameter considered indicative of weld quality. When such monitoring equipment has been introduced into production the results have often been disappointing. This is considered to be because parameter interactions are more complex in a production environment than under laboratory conditions. For this problem to be overcome it is necessary to develop computerised data acquisition systems capable of handling and manipulating large amounts of information. This will permit a better understanding to be gained of the parameters indicative of weld quality.
A high performance data acquisition system capable, with suitable software, of monitoring four parameters simultaneously has been developed at The Welding Institute to permit these investigations to be made.
The full report describes the computer hardware and associated input devices for monitoring selected welding parameters, the development of the required software and the capability of the data acquisition system. The system has been developed as a laboratory tool for research purposes and is not intended as a commercially available package.