Control and process-based optimisation of spot-welding in manufacturing systems

This paper documents a research program undertaken by the CIM Centre at the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne (IRIS) in collaboration with a major automotive manufacturer. The objective of the research was to examine potential mechanisms for improvement of the spot-welding process, which is a major component of automotive assembly. In particular, both traditional techniques for improving suboptimal parameters in the process and advanced techniques, based upon digital signal processor (DSP) control of the process (using acoustic-emission feedback), were applied to an industrial spot-welding test-case. This paper documents the outcomes of the two techniques and we demonstrate how significant improvements can be made to the overall spot-welding process through the adaptation of such technologies.