Proceedings of the 18th World Congress

The International Federation of Automatic Control

Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011

Arc welding Control for Shaped Metal Deposition Process

F. Bonaccorso*, L.Cantelli*, G. Muscato*

*DIEEI, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

(giovanni.muscato@dieei.unict.it)

Abstract: This paper is focused on the study and the control of a deposition process of robotic arc
welding. The process consists of a SMD (Shaped Metal Deposition) system, that is a novel rapid
prototyping tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding technique leading to near-net-shape, using a layer by layer
deposition technique. An experimental setup has been properly implemented in order to study the system
and to develop and tune the parameters of an automatic controller.
Keywords: Industry Automation, Welding Control, Rapid Manufacturing, Control Applications, Industrial
production systems, Industrial robots.

Bonaccorso et al. 2009, Muscato et al. 2008 and the work

1. INTRODUCTION
SMD is an innovative manufacturing process patented by
Rolls-Royce; it was developed to produce mechanical parts
directly from a CAD model.
The work presented has been carried out in the frame of the
RAPOLAC European project (www.RAPOLAC.eu) focussed
on the SMD process.
presented here are the first, as far as we know, dealing with
the study and the control strategies for such a process.
An actual drawback of the process is the need of an operator
constantly monitoring and manually acting on the welding
process parameters. As a matter of this, one of the aims of the
RAPOLAC project is focused on the study of an automatic
control system.

One of the advantages of the process is the substantial In this paper the obtained progress is presented. The paper is
reduction of inventory costs, since the only inventory held is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the experimental
wire. As matter of this, the parts could be built to order. setup. Section 3 introduces the control law developed while.
Section 4 shows the experimental results. Conclusions are
The innovative aspect of the SMD process is a reversed reported in section 5.
production philosophy. Up to now, the traditional
manufacturing methods, such as machining, are based on the
material removing from the work piece, in order to obtain a
desired final shape. There are several evident drawbacks in
this process, like the large waste of material in scraps and the
consequent increase of the costs, depending of the material
used.
The SMD process works by adding progressively the material
to the final workpiece up to obtain the desired shaped
component. This is achieved by adding the material required
layer by layer, as shown in Fig 1. In this way no process
scraps are produced minimizing the material used to the
strictly amount required by the final work piece shape
Fig. 1. A schematic representation of the SMD deposition
(Hensinger et al. 2000, Zhang et al. 2003).
process.
Another significant advantage is reduction of 60% in the
lead-time necessary to produce the parts so that it is ideal for
use in prototype production as well as in manufacturing.
2. THE EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Finally microstructure analysis of produced parts confirms
that there are no disadvantages from the quality point of view
(Baufeld et al. 2010). 2.1 The Hardware architecture

Several works related to arc welding could be found in An experimental system has been properly implemented in
literature. However no one concern concrete implementations order to study the system and to develop and test an
of control strategies on deposition processes. The papers automatic controller.

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Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011
The plant has been set up with a six axis industrial welding
robot, and a 500A TIG inverter, as is shown in Fig. 2. SMD
process prescribes using of a sealed chamber with 99.999%
purity argon. However such a chamber has not been used
doing this work because of the target, in this case, was the
control system, without taking too much attention to the
quality of the final pieces.
The implemented system uses different kind of sensors and a
software interface.
In particular, the SMD plant has been equipped with a
pyrometer and a thermo camera, for analysing both the
temperature distribution and the heating and cooling rate over
the time during the deposition process. The monitoring
system also comprises a welding camera, IR sensors and a
microphone.
Fig. 2. The arc welding plant for performing SMD using
stainless steel 316.
2.2 The Software architecture
The block diagram of the architecture used is shown in Fig. 3.
It is mainly based on the NI Labview™ real time target
architecture.
The interface developed within the NI Labview™ is shown in
Fig. 4; there are several windows and buttons that allow to
examine and to change all the parameters of the process.
It should be observed that, even if one of the final aims of the
RAPOLAC project is to make the SMD process autonomous,
in the developing phases the intervention of the operators is
fundamental. As a consequence, it is very important to have
an user-friendly interface to the process which allows to
monitor all the variables and, if needed, to change in real time
the process parameters.
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In particular the operator can monitor in real time the welding
machine status (digital data, error code), the principal
welding parameters time series like the actual arc voltage and
both the imposed and the actual wire feeder rate, from the
welding machine, the various sensors time series and the
actual torch position that is given by the robot controller.
The interface also permits to change all the main parameters
of the welding machine: wire feeder rate, current, etc. and to
set the controller parameters.
Fig. 3. Process architecture block diagram of the arc welding
SMD.
Fig. 4. Main interface of the control system for the arc
welding SMD.
This interface permitted to deeply study many features of the
SMD process allowing thus to implement and test the right
working parameters of this complex system.
3. THE SMD PROCESS CONTROLLER
3.1 Control strategy summary
Several tests have been performed in order to study the
behaviour of the process. The working variables needed for
the control have been identified in four fundamental key
parameters: the heat source provided to the process (arc
current: I), the injected material mass rate (indicated by the
Wire Feeder Rate: WF), the torch speed (indicated by the
18th IFAC World Congress (IFAC'11)
Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011
Travel Speed: TS) and the thickness imposed for each layer
(indicated by the step height between two subsequent layers:
SH), as indicated in Fig. 1.
As it is reported in Bonaccorso et al. 2009 and Muscato et al.
2008 the four parameters act on the dimensions, thickness
and width, of the final workpiece.
The basic idea for setting up an automatic controller is to
measure the amount of material deposited on each layer h
(see Fig. 1). This amount must be equal to the step height
imposed for the process, in order to avoid depositing too
much or too few material, causing the system to become
unstable. Consequently the height of the material deposited h
should converge to the prefixed step height SH.
According to these information, the wire feeder rate (WF)
must be controlled in order to adapt the incoming material
mass for each layer.
Fig. 5. Arc length measurement.
So the layer height is a key-role parameter of the process and,
moreover, is key-role parameter for the different control
strategies investigated. But this parameter is not simple to be
10
9 y = 1.7451*x - 16.908
7
Arc Length [mm]
1
10 10.5 11
Fig.7 Experimental results: linear relation between arc voltage and arc length estimation.
measured directly, owing to the particular operative
conditions.
However another aspect of process like the torch height from
the bead, gives indirect information about the material
deposited.
There are even different aspects of the process that can be
used to measure the gap which are all directly connected to
the arc physics such as the arc emitted light (Moore et al.
2009, Tzyh-Jong et al. 2007, Zhang 2001), the arc emitted
sound (Sciaky et al. 1966, Ralchenko et al. 2008, Tham 2005)
and the arc voltage as shown in Fig. 5.
A good alternative is a vision system (camera, optics, filters):
using image processing technique, the arc length estimation
can be performed with an optimal level of efficiency (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6. Vision system for arc length estimation.
Several tests have been performed in order to characterize the
vision system and to relate the arc length estimation with the
arc voltage measurement.
Using the relation in Fig.7 it is possible to directly match the
two time series. As showed in Fig. 8, although the both
signals must be opportunely filtered, the arc voltage appears
more disturbed, especially when the arc is short.
11.5 12 12.5 13 13.5 14 14.5 15
Arc Voltage [V]
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Milano (Italy) August 28 - September 2, 2011

10

7
Arc Length [mm]

3
Rescaled Arc Voltage
Arc Length
2

1
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Time [sec]

Fig.8 Experimental results: comparison between rescaled arc voltage and arc length estimation time series.
The control strategy is then implemented as described by the
following equation:

WF = f ( I ,WF ,V − Vref ) (1)

The wire feed rate WF represents the value corresponding to

Fig.9 Image processing to estimate arc length: preliminary
results.
Fig.9 shows the arc length measurement performed during a
cylinder deposition. The oscillation of the measure is due to
no use of rotating table that causes the continuous variation
of welding pool orientation.
The example described shows one of the actual limits of the
vision system. Furthermore the environmental condition of
the Tig welding process is critical (in term of higher values of
temperature and brightness). These particular conditions
imply the use of sophisticated systems in terms of both
hardware and software. Since the vision algorithm refinement
process is still in progress, actually it cannot be successfully
used as feedback.
Although also the video feedback, the arc emitted light and
sound are investigated, the arc voltage is the parameter that
permits in the simplest manner to evaluate the gap. The arc
voltage is the most used parameter to measure the arc length
so that all welding machines usually have an output referred
to the arc voltage.
3.2 The Control Law
Once defined an arc voltage reference corresponding to a
certain gap, an error on the arc voltage value can be
interpreted as an erroneous position of the bead below and
consequently an erroneous value of wire feeder rate.
the stable process working point, in which all the material
coming from the wire feeder is deposited in each layer,
ensuring the stability of the process. This value is strictly
connected to the value of the other parameters: amperage,
travel speed and desired step height. I represents the arc
current and the V-Vref is the arc voltage error. The function
can be a simply linear proportional action, as showed in Fig 7
or more complex solution that permit to take into account the
previous layer deposition error.
WF
WF
V-Vref
Fig. 7. The linear control strategy characteristic adopted by
the controller.
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The different control solutions have been performed
producing from simpler pieces to more complex structures,
using a rotating table as support (Fig 8).
The several trials performed in order to test the SMD
controller have achieved very good performance. The trial
reported in this paper regards a fundamental comparison
between a deposition performed using the SMD automatic
controller and the same one performed manually by an
operator. The test consists in a deposition of 40 layers
Cylinder Ti-6Al-4V in air.

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Fig. 8. Various structures deposited (the last one using a 2 axis rotating table).

Fig. 9. Manual: arc voltage and wire feed rate time series.

Fig. 10. Control: arc voltage and wire feed rate time series

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Fig. 11. Manual vs. Control test
In Fig. 9 and 10 the arc voltage and wire feed rate time series
are shown. As can be highlighted from Fig. 9, during the
manual test the operator has to manually correct the wire feed
rate several times. In the other case (Fig. 10), the controller
tunes the wire feeder rate automatically reaching a steady
state condition so that the process can be leaved unattended.
The two structures are shown in Fig 11.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The proposed system has been adopted in many different
trials to study the process, to get the best working conditions
and the tuning parameters for the controller.
The interface has been also really useful to monitor the
process during the experiments, allowing to check in real
time most of the parameters and to monitor the outputs.
Different control strategies were investigated. All make use
of information coming from different measurements
subsystems, in particular using a welding voltage feedback.
The developed controller permits to maintain the process
stability condition, so that the process results totally
automatic.
The control strategy that has been presented in this work is
also part of a patent deposited.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work presented in this paper has been carried out in the
frame of the RAPOLAC EC project (www.RAPOLAC.eu
AST5-CT-2006-030953), so the ultimate purpose is to
develop the control strategy for the TIG arc welding machine.
This financial support is gratefully acknowledged.
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