Condition monitoring with controlled repair capabilities for process automation in repair welding services

Today, repair welding services are mostly carried out manually. This gives birth to problems which arise from the poor repeatability of welding process conditions and resulting weld quality. Trial and error approaches are mostly adopted in the daily work. To overcome both technical and technological problems in this business it is intended to introduce advanced but specially tailored production technologies in the field of repair welding. The following paper presents an innovative concept for repair welding automation. Special emphasis is given to a modular structured approach involving condition monitoring in combination with computer-assisted process planning and controlled repair capabilities for mechanized and robotized repair welding applications.