A drive system for driving an automatic welding machine for joining the edges of sealing sheets, comprising pressing/advancing rollers located vertically opposite one another and driven by a shared drive motor, downstream of which a transmission gear mechanism is connected, and an upper pressing/advancing roller is disposed rotatably about a roller rotational axis on a tensioning arm of the automatic welding machine, which is pivotable about a tensioning arm axis, and a lower pressing/advancing roller is disposed rotatably about a roller rotational axis on a frame of the automatic welding machine, which is supported by at least two drive rollers, wherein the drive motor and the transmission gear mechanism are rigidly attached to the frame, and the drive motor comprises a motor armature including a protruding rotational shaft, and the transmission gear mechanism comprises a rotatable protruding input shaft and output shaft.

A method for forming a geomembrane liner testable for leaks by securing adjacent panels together with the conductivity of the lower surface of an overlying panel broken along a line adjacent the panel overlapping edge, and the overlapping edges sealed along the line. A heat welder has slots for the overlapping panel edges, with a heated wedge between the slots and having a projection to break the conductivity of the overlying panel bottom surface as it passes the wedge. The slots merge to press the liner edges together to heat weld them along the line of broken conductivity as the welder is moved along the panel edges.

A welding apparatus for welding overlapping plastic material webs along edges of the overlapping plastic material webs, the welding apparatus including a chassis; and a heating device arranged at the chassis and configured for melting the edges of the overlapping plastic material webs, wherein the chassis includes a support frame which includes at least two running rollers that are arranged offset from each other, at least two pressing and feed rollers that are arranged opposite to each other, wherein a lower pressing and feed roller of the at least two running and feed rollers is fixated at the support frame and an upper pressing and feed roller of the at least two running and feed rollers is pivotably supported at the support frame, and at least one drive unit with a transmission, wherein the at least two running rollers are configured for supporting the chassis on a base.

An automatic welding machine for lap welding the edges of plastic webs, comprising a movable supporting frame, a heating device for partially melting the plastic webs, at least two opposing, counter-rotating pressing rollers and/or advancing rollers, at least one of which being driven, and at least one driving device comprising a drive motor and at least one gearbox for driving the pressing and/or advancing rollers, wherein the pressing rollers and/or advancing rollers are driven by the driving device by way of at least one flexible shaft. Furthermore, the gearbox can be implemented as a worm gear mechanism comprising a worm that is seated directly on a motor shaft of the drive motor and two counter-rotating worm gears driven by the worm.

A method for forming a geomembrane liner testable for leaks by securing adjacent panels together with the conductivity of the lower surface of an overlying panel broken along a line adjacent the panel overlapping edge, and the overlapping edges sealed along the line. A heat welder has slots for the overlapping panel edges, with a heated wedge between the slots and having a projection to break the conductivity of the overlying panel bottom surface as it passes the wedge. The slots merge to press the liner edges together to heat weld them along the line of broken conductivity as the welder is moved along the panel edges.

An automatic welding machine, comprising a supporting frame and a tensioning device for reversibly joining at least two opposing booms to one another and applying a tension force between these, having an open position in which the opposing booms are separated from one another by a gap and a closed position in which the opposing booms are joined to one another and braced with respect to one another. One boom is mounted in a torsion-proof manner on the tensioning device and is pivotable in relation to the other boom and can be moved out of the open position into the closed position by the pivoting of the tensioning device. The tension force is generated by way of a spring-loaded element disposed on the tensioning device, wherein the spring-loaded element, at one end, is rigidly connected to a supporting element of the tensioning device and, at the other end, is pivotably mounted on the supporting frame by way of a double swivel joint, and the spring-loaded element is tensioned by the pivoting of the double swivel joint out of the open position into the closed position, whereby a torque is applied onto the pivotable boom.

An automatic bonding apparatus and a method for thermally induced seam bonding of weldable and/or gluable flat flexible material layers with each other which are each configured as a material web, material band and/or material piece and arranged so that they overlap at least partially wherein the bonding is performed by an electrically controlled contact heating arrangement through a heating wedge welding method. A temperature and/or a power of the heating wedge which is formed by a thin folded steel sheet blank is controlled as a function of a relative velocity between the material layers and the automatic bonding apparatus. This is performed so that a thermal energy that is transferred from the heating wedge to the material layers to be glued is kept constant. For this purpose the relative velocity is detected and the power of the heating wedge is automatically adjusted when the relative velocity changes.