Welding Machine Automation for Pneumatic Vessel Fabrication

Fabrication process in industries requires highly skilled workforce to get caliber in part finishing. Welding process joins two materials at their melting point temperatures using thermal energy to melt and allowing them to cool results in fusion of materials. A quality welding demands high accuracy in the welding posture and hand speed of the skilled person. During mass production, manual welding results in loss in quality and production rate. An automatic welding Robot for compressor tank fabrication is developed with PLC as the controller, this design gives higher accuracy in the welding process in the compressor tank fabrication. A compressor tank is made from a sheet metal that is cut and rolled to desired diameter and then the edges are welded to prevent them from separating. The quality of welding in this case needs to be high because there must be no holes and pores in the welded area which may cause air leakage in the life cycle. The automation system gives a workable solution to the existing system and a dynamic analysis of stress and strain profiles of the impact that the welding machine supported by a cantilever beam is done. Programmable logic controller takes control of the transverse velocity with which the wielding head is moving and the optimal values for the welding process. Automation of the welding process is done with SPM(Special purpose machine) combined with automation tools viz. PLC, servo motors, servo drive, human machine interface, sensors & pneumatics systems.