Vision-Guided Seam Tracking Welder

A robot welding arm carries its torch along a metal plate whose weld groove is never quite where the CAD program assumes it is — real parts vary from fixturing tolerance and prior forming steps. A laser/camera seam-tracking sensor scans just ahead of the torch, reads the true groove position, and continuously bends the torch path onto it, leaving a clean weld bead down the actual seam with a small, steady offset error. Switch tracking off and the torch instead blindly replays its original straight-line program: on any part with real tolerance variation, the bead drifts off the groove and the offset error climbs. Adjust the part's tolerance variation, travel speed and weave amplitude to see how each stresses the correction loop.