Hello,
I have been working quite a while on something similar to a slicer for 3d printing but for variable multilayer welds. I am roughly following what is described in the literature "equal area assumption". In short along a basecurve the weld get sliced into crosssections, this crosssection get sliced into passes, this passes get connected and return the paths, which the weld torch is going to follow. A scan (either a .stl or a point cloud) of the part geometry can be provided, since the cad based basecurve and the top cover face of the weld (top bead) are fitted to the scan and the slicing is carried out on this adapted model.
A chart of such a weld looks like:
Along the weld (x-axis) the cross section (y-axis) varies. The colored fields represent the areas of the weld paths. Each area is within the weld procedure specifications determined Amin/Amax borders (caused by min/max. weld speed).
This chart looks in 3d like this:
Some examples (Input and Output) are found on:
https://www.weldslicer.com/examples
With the provided workbench at https://www.weldslicer.com/examples you are able to see and simulate the generated paths. Also the workbench is used to generate the input data for the weldslicer itself.
The handling of the workbench and the result of the weldslicer can be seen on following youtube videos:
https://youtu.be/smP6G42ueHQ
https://youtu.be/qfzyup49luM
https://youtu.be/0O6vrUW6InY
If someone out there is interested and has access to a welding robot please send me a PM.
Edit: Placed the videos inline
Edit2: Place youtube link to videos
workbench for multilayer weld paths - weldslicer
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workbench for multilayer weld paths - weldslicer
Last edited by jbi on Sun Feb 12, 2023 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
- MisterMaker
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Re: workbench for multilayer weld paths - weldslicer
In a dark time of my career I was a welding coordinator and having such tools would have been great, we didn't do any multi-pass welding so most of the time was just a simple weld sketch that I used.
But I would see that guys like TÜV that don't use any CAD programs would also helped with this kind of software.
If I was you I would contact someone at TüV and ask if they are interested.
But I would see that guys like TÜV that don't use any CAD programs would also helped with this kind of software.
If I was you I would contact someone at TüV and ask if they are interested.
Re: workbench for multilayer weld paths - weldslicer
So you mean to sketch out the arrangement of passes? I have already seen for cobots for multilayer welds they type in the offsets in x/y direction to get the layout. Maybe this would be interesting to have such a tool standalone only for single cross sections on arbitrary weld profiles. I will think about it. Thanks for the tip.
Re: workbench for multilayer weld paths - weldslicer
Hello,
Recently I had the opportunity to simulate from the FreeCAD based weldslicer generated weld paths with RoboDK. Enjoy!
Recently I had the opportunity to simulate from the FreeCAD based weldslicer generated weld paths with RoboDK. Enjoy!