Resistance spot welding process identification using an extended knn method

Resistance spot welding is used to join two or more metal objects together, and the technique is in widespread use in, for example, the automotive and electrical industries. This paper introduces the use of the knearest neighbours (knn) method to identify different welding processes. Process information can be used to find suitable initialisation parameters for welding machines or to predict the quality of welding spots using previously gathered data. In this study, the basic knn method was found to be inadequate, and an extension to the knn method was developed. The distance to the k-nearest neighbours was considered important information, and a similarity measure was formulated to provide this information to the user. According to the results, processes can be classified using the method and specific features. The similarity measure proved to be a valuable addition, which helps the user to decide whether the closest process is close enough to be classified as the same process.