Accelerometer-based position and speed sensing for manual pipe welding process

For manual pipe welding process, welding position and speed are two of the most important welding parameters. Highly skilled pipe welders can well adjust their operation to produce high-quality welds. However, even experienced welders may sometimes have defected welds due to improper welding speed. The weld quality will be better guaranteed if the welding position and speed can be measured and other welding parameters can be changed accordingly. This paper introduced the development and experiment results on a practical accelerometer-based torch sensor to measure torch position and speed. Based on the measured acceleration data, the two important welding parameters were calculated with moderate computing load by an embedded control system. For future work, the welding position and speed calculation with sufficient accuracy can help the design of advanced control algorithm to various pipe welding processes.