DAIHEN Corporation (President: Tetsuya Tajiri) developed and started to sell from February the “Robotic Welding Quality Control System” which can detect a poor weld in robotic welding. By means of comparison with the welding data secured by traceability, imperfection in welding can be detected instantaneously. We can say that it has endowed welding robots with a sort of intelligence of “judgment”. In the arc welding line of production plants, human eyesight is usually used to check the results of welding. The reason is that it is difficult to keep assuring the same quality of welding even under an identical condition as the welding environment varies depending on the welding area, the wire supply condition, and changes in the flaw rate of shielding gas and electricity opposition.

A well-skilled worker may well be able to solve by his artisan skill, but a welding robot cannot do that as it works just as instructed. In case of robotic welding, therefore, poor welds are found only by human visual examinations or non-destructive testing.

For automobile manufacturers, an improper weld may cause a recall resulting in their enormous loss as well as compliance problems. It surely will lead to the necessity of risk management to minimize any cost of negative factors or needs for quantification of quality.

In conjunction with this, for the automobile manufacturers who are going to automate their plants it is one of the primary issues whether the quality standard can be attained by raising the ratio of labor-saving and automation in the subsequent process. It has been taken up as the most controversial need booming among the industry year after year.

In the midst of the trend, DAIHEN started to develop a robotic welding quality control system in 2013, and launched the first system placing an emphasis upon traceability in October 2014, which was followed by putting into the market a new system enriched with detection of improper welds in February of this year.