Development of Visual Guidance System for Automatic Welding of Spiral Track Ribbons in Fried Tea Tube

Welding automation has become a hot issue in industrial research. Not only the general welding system is developing continuously, but also the special welding system developed for specific weld features are developing rapidly. In this paper, the features of weld forming of fried tea tube were studied. It is known that the weld seam of fried tea tube is irregular inner spiral. Aiming at the features of weld seam, a visual sensor was designed, and active vision method was used to identify weld seam. On this basis, a visual guidance system was established. Linear laser scanning and welding torch following motion were adopted in welding. The point-by-point comparison method was used to extract the weld seam deviation, and the speed compensation method was used to compensate the deviation. In order to verify the accuracy of the visual guidance system, welding experiments were designed and tested. The deviation values of each axis were recorded for data analysis, and the MATLAB was used to perform spiral curve fitting on data. By comparing the fitting effect of data and observing the actual welding effect, it is determined that the visual system can accurately realize the guiding welding of the fried tea tube.