Intelligent Weld Planning

One of the most exciting new functions released with the new version SORPAS® 10 is the Intelligent Weld Planning for predicting the Optimal Weld Schedule (weld current, force, weld and hold time).

According to the user-defined Weld Task Description (WTD) with information of the sheets, electrodes, type of welding machine, and the desired weld quality, SORPAS® will automatically optimize and find the optimal weld current, force, weld time and hold time.

The splash (expulsion) limit is predicted. Thereby the welding process window is predicted between the quality required minimum weld nugget size and the splash (expulsion) limit.

The Weld Planning Report will be finally produced with the WTD information of sheets, electrodes and weld machine; the predicted optimal Weld Schedule Specifications (WSS); the welding process window with optimal weld current, force, weld time and hold time; and the Weld Quality Results obtained with the optimal welding process parameters.

The SORPAS® Weld Planning works in the following procedure:

• WTD - Weld Task Description
• User Preferences
• Run Weld Planning to predict Optimal Welding Parameters
• Weld Planning Report with WSS - Weld Schedule Specifications

1) WTD - Weld Task Description is to define the weld task with specifications of sheets, electrodes, type of welding machine, and desired weld quality, see the figure to the right.

2) User Preferences is for user preferred planning strategy. The weld current will always be optimized by SORPAS®, but users have freedom to choose their own preferred values for the weld force, weld time, or number of pulses by giving a specific input value, or simply leaving the parameter at 0 to let SORPAS® fully optimize.

3) Run Weld Planning. After defining the Weld Task and selection of User Preferences, the Weld Planning can be started by simply press the "Start" button. SORPAS® will then automatically run all the optimization procedures to first determine the optimal weld force and weld time, then to predict the welding process window and the splash (expulsion) limit, and finally to optimize the weld current and the hold time.

4) Weld Planning Report with WSS - the Optimal Weld Schedule Specifications is the results of the Weld Planning, which includes the given WTD, the predicted optimal welding process parameters (weld current, weld force, weld time and hold time) and the welding process window, as well as the weld quality results predicted with the optimal welding process parameters.

During the Weld Planning, all simulations and optimizations are done with only the same one data file, which substantially reduces the computation time and the use of hard disk space comparing to the generation of Weld Growth Curves and Weldability lobes.