Seamless quality in laser welding

Real-time monitoring with high-speed camera system from ipf

Safe processes guarantee consistently high product quality. This also applies to the processing of metal components using a wide variety of welding processes. A company specializing in this area was faced with the challenge of monitoring a specific welding process in real time.

To evaluate the melt during laser welding, the process was to be recorded with a camera, then analyzed and documented. No easy task, as it turns out in practice. The light emitted by the plasma during welding can lead to overexposure of the recordings. Due to overexposure, a large part of the image information is lost for quality control.

The required system had to avoid these problems and record the fast-moving laser welding process in its entirety to be able to evaluate the result in all details. Since there was only limited space available for the camera and its illumination, the solution had to be compact.

The OC29 high-speed camera systems from ipf electronic meet all these requirements and, in combination with free software, make it possible to record, store and subsequently analyze fast-moving industrial processes at very high frame rates (images per second).

To avoid the described problem of fading of the images, a monochrome camera OC299725 was chosen for this application, as well as several lens filters, which are only permeable to the light waves desired for image recording. Additional illumination also provides the light required for usable image recordings.

Thanks to the high-speed camera system from ipf electronic, the company can now precisely record and analyze the laser welding process. Possible problems are thus identified very quickly, allowing the welding process to be optimized in a targeted manner. For complete documentation of the welding quality, all recordings are also archived via the system.