JPH08155646A - Automatic welding equipment and device therefor - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide automatic welding equipment having structure suitable for reduced size and light weight. CONSTITUTION: A fitting part 12 is fitted into a rail 11 and supported slidable. A belt holding plate 13 is fixed on the fitting part 12, a sliding body 4 is fixed on the belt holding plate 13. An arm supporting part 21 is fixed to the sliding body 4, a welding torch 5 is fixed to the tip of an arm 22. Between the fitting part 12 and belt holding plate 13, part of a timing belt 24 is clamped and fixed. A large gear 28 is fixed to one end of the drive shaft 27 of gear 25 for belt, the large gear 28 is meshed with a small gear 29, the small gear 29 is fixed to the output shaft 32 of speed reducing gear box 31. the input shaft of speed reducing gear box 31 is connected to the turning shaft of electric motor 33. When the electric motor 33 is operated, the sliding body connected to the timing belt 24 is slided along the rail 11.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an automatic welding apparatus and method.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art An automatic welding apparatus of this type is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 50-98454. In this welding apparatus, as shown in FIG. 8, a plurality of magnets 81 are fixed to a traveling rail 82, a traveling platform 83 is movably supported along the traveling rail 82, and an oscillator 84 is mounted on the traveling platform 83. , Welding torch 8 on this oscillator 84
5 are connected. A rack 86 is fixed to the traveling rail 82, and a traveling motor 87 and a reduction gear 88 are mounted on the traveling platform 83. A pinion that meshes with the rack 86 is fixed to the output shaft of the reduction gear 88.

When this welding apparatus is used, first, with the traveling rail 82 along the linear groove 89 of the material to be welded, each magnet 81 is attracted to the material to be welded to move the traveling rail 82. Fix it. Oscillator 84 of this traveling rail 82
After the tip of the welding torch 85 connected to the welding torch 85 is brought close to the groove of the material to be welded, welding by the welding torch 85 is started and the traveling motor 87 is operated to move the traveling platform 83 to the traveling rail 82. Move along. Since the traveling rail 82 is along the groove 89 of the material to be welded,
The tip of the welding torch 85 moves along the groove 89 of the material to be welded, and the groove 89 of the material to be welded is welded.

[0004]

By the way, in the above-mentioned conventional welding apparatus, the rack 86 is fixed to the traveling rail 82,
Since the pinion of the traveling platform 83 that meshes with the rack 86 is rotated to move the traveling platform 83, it is necessary to mount the traveling motor 87 as a power source and the reduction gear 88 on the traveling platform 83. For this reason, the weight of the traveling platform 83 is increased, but with this, the strength of the traveling rail 82 must be sufficiently improved, resulting in that the entire welding device becomes heavy. Furthermore, since each magnet 81 also has to be made large, the whole of this welding apparatus becomes heavier.

Therefore, the welding device having such a structure is inconvenient to carry and is not suitable for one person to perform a sufficient work.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an automatic welding device having an optimal structure for reducing the size and weight.

[0007]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, an automatic welding apparatus of the present invention is provided with a main body casing, a timing belt spanned in the main body casing, and a drive for driving the timing belt. A source, a rail juxtaposed to the timing belt, a sliding body that slides along the rail and is connected to the timing belt, a welding torch gripping means that is mounted on the sliding body and grips the welding torch,
And a plurality of electromagnets arranged on the bottom of the main body casing.

[0008]

The automatic welding apparatus of the present invention has a timing belt, a drive source, a rail, a sliding body, a welding torch gripping means, and electromagnets which are integrally provided in a main body casing, and is small in size for easy carrying. It has an optimal structure for weight reduction.

Since the sliding body slides along the rail and is connected to the timing belt, when the timing belt is driven by the driving source, the sliding body slides along the rail. Since the welding torch gripping means is mounted on the sliding body, if the main body housing is fixed to the body to be welded by the electromagnets of the main body housing and appropriately positioned, the sliding body can be slid. The welding torch gripping means can be moved along the groove of the object to be welded.

Here, since the combination of the rail and the timing belt for moving the sliding body does not require the drive source, that is, the electric motor or the reduction gear to be mounted on the sliding body, the sliding body can be lightened. . Moreover, since the weight of the sliding body can be reduced, the weight of the rail, the main body housing, the electromagnets, and the like can be reduced. Therefore, the overall weight of the device can be significantly reduced, which leads to downsizing.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the appearance of an embodiment of the automatic welding apparatus of the present invention. In the figure, the main body housing 1 is
It is composed of a control casing 2 and a sliding casing 3. The control casing 2 has various switches and incorporates a control circuit for controlling the automatic welding device. The sliding body casing 3 is a portion that slidably supports the sliding body 4 along the arrow A, and the welding torch 5 is mounted on the sliding body 4.

FIG. 2 shows a mechanism for slidably supporting the sliding body 4. The rail 11 is a casing 3 for a sliding body.
It is fixed to the inner bottom of the. The recessed portion 12a of the fitting portion 12 is fitted into the rail 11 so that the fitting portion 12 is slidably supported along the rail 11. This fitting part 1
A belt holding plate 13 is fixed on the belt 2, and a sliding body 4 is fixed on the belt holding plate 13. The sliding body 4 includes a lower substrate 14, a spacer 15, an upper substrate 16,
The slider base portion 17 and the slider moving portion 18 are stacked. The lower substrate 14 is led out from the elongated hole 3a of the sliding body casing 3 shown in FIG. 1, and the spacer 15, the upper substrate 16 and the like on the lower substrate 14 are arranged outside.

Further, an arm supporting portion 21 is fixed to the slider moving portion 18. The arm supporting portion 21 is formed with a hole 21a through which the arm 22 passes and a slit 21b extending along the hole 21a.
Bolts (not shown) orthogonal to each other are screwed into the arm support portion 21. When the bolt is loosened, the hole 21a of the arm support portion 21 widens, so that the arm 22 can be moved along the arrow B. When the bolt is tightened, the hole 21a is narrowed. Therefore, the arm 22 is tightened and fixed. can do.

A torch grip 23 is provided at the tip of the arm 22. The torch grip 23 has a hole 23a through which the welding torch 5 passes and a slit 23b extending along the hole 23a. A bolt (not shown) orthogonal to the slit 23b is screwed into the torch grip 23. ing. By loosening or tightening this bolt, the welding torch 5 can be moved along the arrow C or fixed.

Between the fitting portion 12 and the belt holding plate 13,
A part of the timing belt 24 is sandwiched and fixed. The timing belt 24 is stretched over a pair of belt gears 25 and 26. One belt gear 25 is fixed to a drive shaft 27, and a large gear 28 is fixed to one end of the drive shaft 27. In this large gear 28,
The small gear 29 meshes with each other, the small gear 29 is fixed to the output shaft 32 of the reduction gear box 31, and the input shaft of the reduction gear box 31 is connected to the rotating shaft of the electric motor 33. When the electric motor 33 is operated, the output shaft 32 of the reduction gear box 31 rotates, and accordingly, the small gear 29 and the large gear 28 rotate, and the belt gear 25 rotates. As a result, the timing belt 24 rotates between the timing gears 25 and 26, and the sliding body 4 connected to the timing belt 24 slides along the rail 11.

An encoder 34 is connected to the drive shaft 27 of the belt gear 25. The encoder 34 detects the rotation angle of the belt gear 25. Since the rotation angle of the belt gear 25 is proportional to the moving distance of the sliding body 4, the position of the sliding body 4 can be known by detecting the rotation angle of the belt gear 25.

Limit switches 35 and 36 are provided near both ends of the rail 11. These limit switches 35 and 36 detect the boundaries on both sides of the moving range of the sliding body 4, and when the sliding body 4 reaches either of the boundaries on both sides, the moving body 4 moves to the limit switches 35. , 36 of the contacts.

3A and 3B show the structure of the sliding body 4. In this sliding body 4, the slider base 1
7 is fitted in the concave portion 18a of the slider moving portion 18, and the slider moving portion 18 is slidably supported. The rotating shaft 37 penetrates the wall 18b of the slider moving portion 18 and is rotatably supported. Also, this rotating shaft 37
Are screwed into the slider base 17. This rotating shaft 3
When the knob 38 of 7 is rotated, the slider base 17 moves along with the arrow D accordingly.

FIG. 4 shows the bottom of the sliding body casing 3. A plurality of electromagnets 41 are arranged on the bottom of the sliding body casing 3. These electromagnets 41 are composed of an E-type iron core 42 and a coil 43.
Each time, the three end faces of the E-shaped iron core 42 are exposed. Each end surface of these E-shaped iron cores 42 is adsorbed to the object to be welded as described later, whereby the automatic welding device is fixed to the object to be welded. In this way, when there are many end faces, that is, many suction sites, even if the surface of this work piece is somewhat uneven, some of these suction sites will stick to the work piece, so an automatic welding device should be used. Can be securely fixed.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing a schematic structure of this automatic welding apparatus. In the figure, the main body controller 51 is housed in the control casing 2 and directly drives and controls this automatic welding apparatus. The remote controller 52 uses the main controller 5 as necessary.
Connected to 2. This remote controller 52 is connected to the connector 53 of the control casing 2 through an extension cord, and indirectly drives and controls this automatic welding device via the main body controller 51, or sends a welding wire to the welding torch 5. The delivery device 54 and the welding current power supply 55 that supplies the welding current to the welding torch 5 are controlled.

The main body controller 51 includes a movement start switch 56, a movement stop switch 57, a speed adjustment volume 58, a movement direction instruction switch 59, and an electromagnet switch 6.
1 etc. are attached. Also, this main body controller 5
1 includes an encoder 34 and limit switches 35 and 3
6, the electric motor 33, and each electromagnet 41 are connected.

Here, after adjusting the speed adjusting volume 58 appropriately to arbitrarily specify the target speed of the sliding body 4,
When the movement start switch 56 is turned on, the main body controller 51 activates the electric motor 33 to start the movement of the sliding body 4. Then, the main body controller 5 inputs the detection signal from the encoder 34 that detects the rotation angle of the belt gear 25, and changes in the position of the sliding body 4 corresponding to the rotation angle of the belt gear 25, that is, The speed of the sliding body 4 is calculated, and the speed of the sliding body 4 and the speed adjusting volume 5
The target speed instructed by 8 is compared, and the electric motor 33 is controlled so that both speeds match.

When the sliding body 4 is moved to the vicinity of either end of the rail 11, the sliding body 4 comes into contact with one of the contacts of the limit switches 35 and 36. In response to this, the main body controller 51 stops the electric motor 33 and stops the sliding body 4 at the end of the rail 11.

When the moving direction instruction switch 59 is switched while the sliding body 4 is moving, in response to this, the main body controller 51 reverses the rotation direction of the rotating shaft of the electric motor 33, so that the sliding body 4 moves. Reverse the moving direction. Further, when the movement stop switch 57 is turned on, the main body controller 51 stops the electric motor 33 and stops the sliding body 4.

Further, when the electromagnet switch 61 is turned on, the main body controller 51 supplies a current to each electromagnet 41 to excite the electromagnets 41.

On the other hand, the remote controller 52 is also provided with a movement start switch 62, a movement stop switch 63, a speed adjustment volume 64, a movement direction instruction switch 65 and the like. By operating these switches and the volume, the sliding body 4 can be moved as in the case of operating the main body controller 51 described above.

The remote controller 52 controls the wire feeding device 54 and the welding current power source 55 to synchronize the feeding speed of the welding wire fed to the welding torch 5 and the welding current supplied to the welding torch 5. Let me change it periodically.

FIG. 6 shows the welding wire feeding speed,
It is a graph which shows the relationship of welding current. As is clear from this graph, the feed rate of the welding wire and the welding current change periodically in synchronization with each other. When the delivery speed of the welding wire is high, the welding current is increased, and when the delivery speed of the welding wire is low, the welding current is decreased. As a result, the size of the droplet at the groove can be changed periodically.

Such a welding method is effective when the groove is substantially vertical and droplets are likely to drip. In other words, if you try to weld continuously and uniformly with a sufficient width and depth, the droplets will immediately grow and drop, but for a certain period of time, you will increase the feed rate of the welding wire and increase the welding current. This increases the droplet size, and before the droplet drops, the welding wire feed rate is reduced and the welding current is reduced during the next fixed period, thereby cooling the preceding droplet. Make it solid.
By repeating the growth and pseudo-solidification of the droplet, the welding can be performed with a sufficient width and depth without causing the droplet to flow.

This welding method is advantageous in reducing the weight of the apparatus, since it is not necessary to attach a special mechanism such as weaving to the welding torch. That is, since a mechanism for weaving is attached to the welding torch, if the portion related to the welding torch becomes heavy, the sliding body 4 and the rail 1
Since the strength of No. 1 has to be increased, these sliding bodies and rails become heavy, and if it becomes necessary to increase the strength of the case, the case must be made heavy. As a result, the entire device becomes heavy.

Now, the automatic welding device having such a structure is
It is used in the following procedure.

First, as shown in FIG. 7, the sliding body casing 3 is formed.
Are arranged substantially parallel to the groove 72 of the object to be welded 71, and the electromagnets 41 at the bottom of the sliding body casing 3 are applied to the object to be welded 71. At this time, the sliding body 4 is moved to the lowermost side, the sliding body 4 is moved along the arrow D (shown in FIG. 3B), and the welding torch attached to the tip of the arm 22 is used. 5 is moved along the arrow C (shown in FIG. 2) to direct the tip of the welding torch 5 to the lowermost end of the groove 72 and set the distance between the tip of the welding torch 5 and the groove 72 appropriately. To do.

In this state, when the electromagnet switch 61 of the main body controller 51 is turned on, the main body controller 5
1, the electromagnets 41 are excited and attracted to the object to be welded 71, and this automatic welding device is fixed to the object to be welded 71.

After arranging the automatic welding device in this way, when the movement start switch 62 of the remote controller 52 is turned on, the fact is transmitted to the main body controller 51, and the main body controller 51 activates the electric motor 33 to cause sliding. Slide the body 4. As a result, the sliding body 4 moves from the bottom to the top, and the tip of the welding torch 5 is moved to the groove 7 of the welded body 71.
Move from bottom to top along 2.

Simultaneously with the activation of the electric motor 33, the remote controller 52 activates the wire feeding device 54 and the welding current power source 55. As a result, the welding wire is fed from the wire feeding device 54 to the welding torch 5, and the welding current is supplied from the welding current power source 55 to the welding torch 5. Of course, the relationship between the welding wire feeding speed and the welding current is as shown in the graph of FIG.

As a result, the groove 72 of the body 71 to be welded is welded from bottom to top, that is, while advancing upward, with a sufficient width and depth.

In this way, the welding torch 5 moves upward, the tip of the welding torch 5 reaches the upper end of the groove 72, and the groove 7
When welding is performed up to the upper end of 2, the movement stop switch 63 of the remote controller 52 is turned on. In response to this, the remote controller 52 stops the sliding body 4 through the main body controller 51. Also, the remote controller 52
Is a wire feeding device 54 and a welding current power source 55.
To stop.

As described above, in the embodiment, the rail 11 is fixed to the inner bottom of the sliding body casing 3, and the sliding body 4 is fixed to the rail 1.
1 is slidably supported, the sliding body 4 is connected to the timing belt 24, and the timing belt 24 is rotated to move the sliding body 4.
Since it is not necessary to mount an electric motor or a reduction gear on the sliding body 4, it is possible to reduce the weight of the sliding body 4. This leads to the weight reduction of the rail 11, the main body housing 1, the electromagnets 41 and the like, and realizes the weight reduction of the entire apparatus.

Further, the wire supply speed and the welding current are synchronized with each other and periodically changed, and when the wire supply speed is increased, the welding current is increased, whereby the growth of droplets is prevented. Repeated impersonation. For this reason, even when welding a groove that is set up vertically, the welding can be performed with a sufficient width and depth without causing the droplets to flow. This welding method is advantageous in reducing the weight of the apparatus because it does not need to be provided with a special mechanism such as weaving.

[0041]

As described above, the automatic welding apparatus of the present invention has a structure in which the timing belt, the drive source, the rail, the sliding body, the welding torch gripping means, and the electromagnets are provided integrally in the main body casing, The size and weight can be reduced so that it is convenient to carry.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing the appearance of an embodiment of an automatic welding apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing the internal structure of the apparatus shown in FIG.

3 (a) shows a sliding body in the device of FIG.
2 is a cross-sectional view taken along the line II 'of FIG. 3, and FIG. 3B is a cross-sectional view taken along the line II-II' of FIG. 2 showing the sliding body in the apparatus of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing each electromagnet arranged on the bottom of the sliding body casing in the apparatus of FIG.

5 is a block diagram showing a schematic configuration of the apparatus shown in FIG.

6 is a chart showing the relationship between the welding wire feed rate and the welding current in the apparatus of FIG.

FIG. 7 is a perspective view showing a usage state of the apparatus of FIG.

FIG. 8 is a perspective view showing a conventional device.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Main Body 2 Control Housing 3 Sliding Body Housing 4 Sliding Body 5 Welding Torch 11 Rail 24 Timing Belt 31 Reduction Gear Box 33 Electric Motor 41 Electromagnet 51 Main Controller 52 Remote Controller 54 Wire Feeder 55 Welding Current Power supply

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A main body housing, a timing belt spanned in the main body housing, a drive source for driving the timing belt, rails arranged in parallel with the timing belt, and sliding along the rails. An automatic welding device is provided with a sliding body connected to the timing belt, a welding torch gripping unit mounted on the sliding body for gripping the welding torch, and a plurality of electromagnets arranged on the bottom of the main body casing. 2. A control means for controlling the welding torch is further provided, wherein the control means periodically changes the supply speed of the wire to the welding torch and changes the welding current in synchronization with the supply speed of the wire. The automatic welding apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the welding current is increased when the supply speed of the wire is increased. 3. A welding torch is supplied with a wire supply rate which is periodically changed and a welding current is changed in synchronism with the wire supply rate. When the wire supply rate is increased, the welding is performed. Automatic welding method to increase the electric current.