A welding apparatus comprises support members adapted to support parts to be welded, a slit being defined between planes of the support members to expose the parts to be welded. A linear actuator unit having a carriage linearly displaceable along the slit. A welding unit is mounted to the carriage having a torch located substantially below the planes of the support members, and is adapted to be in proximity to the parts via the slit to transmit current to the parts to weld same.

A teaching system rewinds a welding wire in accordance with a detection that a tip of a welding wire contacts a teach subject, and feeds the welding wire in accordance of a non-detection that the tip of the welding wire contacts the teach subject. Furthermore, the teaching system, if a current protruding length of the welding wire is less than a predetermined length, moves a robot in a direction away from the teach subject, and, if the current protruding length is greater than the predetermined length, moves the robot in a direction closer to the teach subject. The teaching system, if a determination that the current protruding length is equal to the predetermined length, stops feeding and rewinding of the welding wire and stops the robot, and stores a stop position of the robot as a teaching position.

A method for providing a referenced distance signal which corresponds to the distance between a contact tip of a welding torch and a workpiece to be machined, includes adjusting an operating point on a predetermined welding characteristic, which is defined at least by a wire feed rate, a welding voltage and/or a welding current, and a CTWD distance between the contact tip and the workpiece; determining a target parameter value of at least one parameter dependent on the CTWD distance for the operating point; determining an actual parameter value of the at least one parameter by measuring at least one of the present wire feed rate, welding voltage and/or welding current; modifying the determined actual parameter value as a function of a calculated difference between the target parameter value and a predetermined reference value; and outputting the referenced distance signal corresponding to the modified actual parameter value to a position control system of a robot arm.

Methods and apparatus for a material cutting system are provided. The system has a table for receiving a work piece. A cutting head cuts the work piece on the table and includes a positioning apparatus. The positioning apparatus moves the cutting head relative to the work piece at an angle relative to a planar surface of the work piece. The material cutting system also includes a computerized numeric controller (CNC) controlling the positioning apparatus. The CNC references a table of values within application software to find a material value and a work piece thickness value within the table to determine the angle from the perpendicular to produce a kerf edge that is formed at a particular angle to the work piece planar surface.

Disclosed is a hybrid additive manufacturing system that includes a laser system and an additive manufacturing tool, such as an arc welding type torch. The tool is configured to receive a metallic electrode wire, which is heated by a power supply to create droplets for deposition to create the part by building up successive layers of metal. The additive manufacturing system operates through coordination of the laser system to generate a laser beam, which is applied to a weld bead, and an arc welding process, which provides material for the part. A threshold value of laser intensity and/or power can be applied to the weld puddle to stabilize the arc. Through the laser beam, an arc cone position can be manipulated such that the energy into the molten pool can be redistributed.

An apparatus includes a welding torch, a laser capable of projecting a beam towards a seam on a surface, a camera directed towards the surface, a memory, and a processor. The processor receives an image of the surface from the camera. Next, the processor determines, based on the reflection of the laser beam from the surface, a vertical distance from the torch to the seam. The processor adjusts the brightness and contrast of the image, applies a gamma correction, and applies at least one gradient filter to the image to produce a new image. Next, the processor determines a horizontal location of the seam in the new image, which it uses to determine a horizontal distance from the torch to the seam. Based on the vertical and horizontal distances from the torch to the seam, the processor adjusts a vertical and a horizontal position of the torch.

A welding accessory that allows a welder to easily maintain the proper electrical arc gap between the welding torch and the surface being welded, and that improves the consistency of the shield gas plume by reducing the variation of gap between the shield gas nozzle and the surface being welded while in motion is disclosed. In a preferred embodiment, the welding accessory is comprised of a body portion, a slidable and rotatable repositionable arm; and a wheel attached to one end of said repositionable arm. A kit that comprises the welding accessory of the present invention and other accessories for welding and/or oxy-fuel cutting is also disclosed.

Embodiments of systems and methods of additive manufacturing are disclosed. In one embodiment, a computer control apparatus accesses multiple planned build patterns corresponding to multiple build layers of a three-dimensional (3D) part to be additively manufactured. A metal deposition apparatus deposits metal material to form at least a portion of a build layer of the 3D part. The metal material is deposited as a beaded weave pattern, based on a planned path of a planned build pattern, under control of the computer control apparatus. A weave width, a weave frequency, and a weave dwell of the beaded weave pattern are dynamically adjusted during deposition of the beaded weave pattern. The adjustments are under control of the computer control apparatus based on the planned build pattern, as a width of the build layer varies along a length dimension of the build layer.

The present invention relates to a welding torch including a mounting jig for mounting a wire-aiming guide which feeds a welding wire toward a molten pool of a work piece, wherein the mounting jig has a male screw that can be screwed into a female screw provided in a torch body, and is detachably mounted to the torch body; and a mounting jig. The present invention provides the welding torch with which a wire-aiming guide can be stably mounted and which can mount a highly versatile wire-aiming guide; and the mounting jig.

A system and method to correct for height error during a robotic welding additive manufacturing process. One or both of a welding output current and a wire feed speed are sampled during a robotic welding additive manufacturing process when creating a current weld layer. A plurality of instantaneous contact tip-to-work distances (CTWD's) are determined based on at least one or both of the welding output current and the wire feed speed. An average CTWD is determined based on the plurality of instantaneous CTWD's. A correction factor is generated, based on at least the average CTWD, which is used to compensate for any error in height of the current weld layer.