Experimental investigation on machine vision based inspection of metal inert gas welded joints using intelligent techniques

Abstract

In the present industrial scenario the worldwide manufacturing markets have been facing heavy competition to produce cost effective higher quality products This has led to great advances in the technology by automating production processes and quality control The area of quality control encompasses a lot of problems yet to be resolved Due to these gaps in the industry there arises the necessity for active research in inspection and quality control Though human experts can do better than machines in many ways in the visual inspection and quality control they lack consistency and efficiency in a long run The processes of providing training to humans and expecting considerable skill development from them are challenging Machine vision may effectively replace human inspection in such situations Welding is a major joining process used to fabricate many engineered artifacts and structures such as cars ships space shuttles off shore drilling platforms and pipe lines Metal Inert Gas MIG welding is a semi automatic or automatic arc welding process in which a continuous and consumable wire electrode and a shielding gas are fed through a welding gun