RAFT 101

an introduction

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 Agenda
o Overview
o Why RAFT ?
o Hardware
o Setting up AdaptQ
o SoftQ
o Allowed RAFT applications
o Monitor RAFT applications
o RAFT specification
o RAFT Installations
o RAFT GM installations
o Further information

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 What does RAFT mean?
Measures resistance
during nugget formation

Automatically adjusts to
different conditions

Uses voltage and current signals

from the weld being made

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 Overview

AdaptQ SoftQ

Changes weld current and weld time - Magnitude of disturbance in process

to provide the required nugget - Confidence level of nugget diameter
diameter over process disturbances - Welding gun/tool degradation indicator
while greatly reducing expulsion. - Tip dress verification
- Expulsion summary

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Why RAFT ?
Five Major Reasons!
1. Reducing Vehicle Weight

Governments are requiring that the auto industry produce vehicles with
greater fuel efficiency.

By 2022, the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) goal is 50 MPG

(21.26 Km/liter) in most models. This is driving the use of lighter & stronger
materials (Ultra High Strength Steels).

RAFT enables quality production welding of ultra high

strength steels (Press Hardened Steels or PHS).

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Why RAFT ? Expulsion occurs when the electrode
force is too low to contain the nugget
formation. Common causes:
- Too much current
Five Major Reasons! -
-
Too low of electrode force
Poor metal fit-up
- Skidding of electrodes

2. Expulsion - Misalignment of electrodes

Expulsion issues:

Weld Time (m Sec)

Expulsion Limit
- Contamination of Paint shop
- Personnel safety
- Increases metal finishing
- Environmental quality
RAFT keeps you here
- Increased tool maintenance

RAFT reduces expulsion through superior control!

RAFT reports expulsion and guides maintenance action.

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Why RAFT ?
Five Major Reasons!

3. Tip Dressing
Tip dressers have many production problems:
- Dull blades
- Blades do not rotate Poor tip dress result
- Blades break

When tip dressers fail to do their job undetected bad

welds are created.
RAFT verifies proper tip dress
by monitoring the tooling resistance.

Prevents poor welds from leaving the welding station.

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Why RAFT ?
Five Major Reasons!

4. Destructive Testing
It is common that 4 to 6 car bodies are destroyed every day to monitor the quality level
of resistance weld. This manual process is very expensive.

In addition, if a bad weld is found all the bodies between the last destructive test and the
last welded body may have to be scrapped.
AdaptQ provides a quality weld over a range of disturbances.

SoftQ provides weld quality verification while in the welding station.

The need for destructive testing will be reduced over time.

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Why RAFT ?
Five Major Reasons!
5. Portable Weld Gun Issues
Single trigger multiple stack-up

It is difficult to design systems that provide one schedule per stack-up.

This problem is presently being handled in three ways:
- High / Low Initiation – Problem: Limited # of schedules and operator could select wrong schedule
- Multiple guns in one station – Problem: Extra cost and operator could pick the wrong gun
- Single metal stack-up per station – Problem: Extra cost and floor space

RAFT eliminates operator error.

RAFT reduces the number guns.
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RAFT PRINCIPLE
– Monitor Secondary Voltage

Secondary Voltage Wires Voltage Pickup Wiring

used to calculate the faying

resistance and is used to
compare to known good
reference weld Faying Resistance -
where the nugget grows.
This resistance varies during weld formation.

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Easy Setup Steps of ADAPTQ

1. R - Measure (benchmark of tooling)

2. Reference weld (weld to replicate)
3. Validate the quality of the reference weld
4. Go into ADAPTQ automatic
5. Validate the quality of Adaptive

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R-Measure
Perform short circuit weld to
determine the OFFSET
resistance.

R = Vsec / Isec

Gun
Voltage
Resistance
Sense
or offset
Wires
resistance

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R-Measure

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Successful R Measure Curve
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Reference Weld
• A normal constant current R Peak

weld without expulsion or

other disturbances.
• Base line of information
Coupling / Melting / Nugget Growth Phase
Heating
Phase

for AdaptQ and SoftQ

• It is performed for every
schedule.

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RAFT – AdaptQ – Master button - automatic

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RAFT handling a disturbance

3T: 0.72mm mild GN 7585 = Reference

7607 = Gun Force + 45.4 kgf (+0.44 KN) (+100 lbs)

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RAFT handling a disturbance

3T: 0.72mm mild GN 7585 = Reference

7602 = Gun Force - 45.4 kgf (-0.44 KN) (-100 lbs)

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RAFT handling a disturbance

3T: 0.72mm mild GN 7585 = Reference

7623 = Increased Cap Face from 6mm to 8mm

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RAFT handling a disturbance

Welding Solutions for Global Demands Extensive electrode wear with

1.0mm to 1.00mm mild HDG
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SoftQ

AdaptQ SoftQ

Changes weld current and weld time - Magnitude of disturbance in process

to provide the required nugget - Confidence level of nugget diameter
diameter over process disturbances - Welding gun/tool degradation indicator
while greatly reducing expulsion. - Tip dress verification
- Expulsion summary

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SoftQ
In station verification and trending analysis
SoftQ evaluates the resultant data from the last weld as compared to the
constant current reference weld and calculates the following:
PI – Process Integrity identifies the magnitude of disturbances
NI – Nugget Integrity identifies the confidence of an acceptable
weld nugget.
TI – Tooling Integrity identifies the health of the tooling
Tip Dress Verification
Expulsion Summary

SoftQ functions in both

constant current and adaptive welding modes.

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SoftQ Process Integrity - PI
P-Integrity identifies the magnitude of disturbances in the process

Three sheet disturbance

Normal process variation - two sheets

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PI goes to zero !
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SoftQ Nugget Integrity - NI
N-Integrity identifies the confidence of an acceptable nugget

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SoftQ Tooling Integrity - TI
T-Integrity identifies the health of the tooling

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SoftQ
Tip Dress Verification

Identified Poor Tip Dress

Resistance is
outside of
limits!
BAD TIP DRESS

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SoftQ Expulsion Summary

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 Allowed RAFT Applications
• Direct, single welds:
– MFDC Robots
– MFDC Portable Transgun
– MFDC Cable guns
– MFDC Pedestal Welders
– MFDC Custom tooling

MFDC
Transformer
mounted on gun

200KVA MFDC
Transformer
mounted with
control

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Monitor Applications for SoftQ

• Series welds
• Multiple welds at the same time
• Flash or butt welding
• Seam welding
• Projection welding
• Aluminum welding

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 RAFT Specifications
Area Item RAFT
Robot mode
Key feature Yes
One schedule/one spot
Robot mode
Key feature Yes
One schedule/one multiple spot
Insertable Programmable instruction
Key feature Portable gun mode one schedule handles overall stack-ups
from 1.2mm to 8mm
Variables: Current, resistance, heat, energy, & others
Speed: Displays 60 welds per min on screen refresh
rate, 100 welds per min data storage rate
Time Resolution: millisecond or MFDC cycle
Key feature Graphing of individual weld
Scaling: Automatic
Multiple graphs: Overlay of reference weld and view of
selected multiple welds
Storage: All graphs can be stored and compared
Insertable Programmable instruction
Key feature High strength steel mode
Stack-up range: 1mm to 5mm
Key feature Expulsion detection Indicated on screen and in weld data
Key feature Expulsion reaction Automatic increase or decrease of current
Key feature Expulsion history Displayed in bar graph format
Automatic in adaptive mode,
Key feature Steppers
counted steps with boost in constant current mode.
Key feature Tip Dresser monitoring Confirms proper tip dressing has occurred
Direct adjust of Nugget size and
Key feature Adjustments allowed adaptive mode
Expulsion / weld time
61 recorded variables per weld
Key feature Data reporting of weld information
including spot and part IDs
Ability to duplicate and re-use reference weld
Key feature Yes
curves

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 RAFT Specifications
Area Item RAFT
Adaptive Current Automatic increase or decrease from reference weld
Automatic increase or decrease of current from
reference weld,
Adaptive Time
with consistent disturbance the algorithm learns
shortest weld time
Automatic current increase or decrease from
Adaptive Expulsion
reference weld
Adaptive Metal thickness range (Min) .65mm to .65mm
Adaptive Metal thickness range (Max) 5 mm to 5 mm
Mild (100-300Mpa)
Adaptive Verified, normal adaptive
bare & coated
Adaptive High strength, bare & coated (300Mpa - 600Mpa) Verified, normal adaptive
Adaptive Advanced High Strength (600-900Mpa) Verified, high strength mode
Adaptive Ultra High Strength (900-1600Mpa) Verified, high strength mode
Adaptive Reference curve One weld or average of multiple welds
Keeps nugget diameter within .5mm
Adaptive Disturbance - shunt
in weld spacing from 30mm to 15mm
Keeps nugget diameter relative to cap face
Adaptive Disturbance - switch to big cap
in cap change of 6mm to 8mm
Maintain nugget diameter (depending on % of edge)
Adaptive Disturbance - Edge
Sense of expulsion - 95% of cases
Keeps nugget diameter within .5mm
Adaptive Disturbance - Force
over force change of +/-15%
Keeps nugget diameter relative to cap face
Adaptive Disturbance - Wear
over 1200 welds on bare metal
Maintain nugget within .5mm'
Adaptive Disturbance - Gap
Gap detection fault
Keeps nugget diameter within .5mm
Adaptive Disturbance - Sealer
Without expulsion
Improvement over constant current with many
Adaptive .5 STD improvement in nugget diameter
disturbances introduced in a D.O.E. format

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 RAFT Specifications
Area Item RAFT
Based on the weld data the control calculates the
Independent
Process Integrity (PI) level of disturbances that occurred in this weld.
Verification
0% to 100% (100% = no disturbance)
Based on the weld data the control calculates the
Independent
Nugget Integrity (NI) size of the weld nugget made by this weld schedule
Verification
0% to 150% (100% = reference diameter)
Based on the weld data the control calculates the
Independent
Tooling Integrity (TI) how much the welding tool has degraded
Verification
0% to 150% (150% = tool performance @ reference)
Separate graphs for PI, NI, TI, Average current,
Independent
Graphing Average resistance, average secondary voltage, weld
Verification
time, C-Factor, heat, energy
Independent
Envelope Graphing PI = Based on selected stored welds and modifies NI
Verification
Separate limits for PI, NI, TI, Average current, Average
resistance, average secondary voltage, weld time, C-
Independent
Upper and lower control limits Factor, heat, energy
Verification
with faults limits,
can be based in envelope graph information
Separate limits for PI, NI, TI, Average current, Average
resistance, average secondary voltage, weld time, C-
Independent
Upper and lower trend limits Factor, heat, energy
Verification
with faults limits,
can be based in envelope graph information

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 RAFT Specifications
Area Item RAFT
Schedules Programmable schedule Yes
Allowed in adaptive mode
Schedules Pulsation
Extended time adds pulses
Schedules Preheat/Downslope Yes - non adaptive
Schedules Upslope / Downslope Yes - non adaptive
Allows adjustment of the sensing and the type of
Schedules Expulsion
control reaction of expulsion
Schedules Change force during weld Yes
Schedules Wait for force to be achieved before starting weld Yes
Schedules Current and time limits in adaptive mode Yes

Ability to handle adaptive, non-adaptive and other

Networking Yes
products on one network
Any number of workstations are allowed for weld
Networking Multi-workstations on one network data, graph data is allowed only one workstation at a
time
Networking Data Entry Panel interface DEP-300 and Web timer interface
Networking Database storage of data Optional - using SQL format
Networking Adaptive software Seat or plant license available
Networking Ability to move data to other platforms Yes
Networking Part / spot layout Not available
Networking Review of adpative status over multiple timers Not available
Networking Review of quality status over multiple timers Not available
Single button for automatic programming of
Networking control limits and trend limits for groups of Yes
schedules based on markded benchmarked data.

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 RAFT Users
KUKA Toledo Production Opel Engineering, Germany
Tower Automotive, Chicago Opel Kaiserslautern, Germany
L & W, Livonia GM Engineering, Warren
Gestamp, Mason GM Springhill, Tennessee
Gestamp, Lapeer Honda Engineering USA
Gestamp, Tennessee Honda Engineering Japan
Shanghai Medar, China Honda Canada Motors
Chrysler Warren Stamping Honda Alabama Plants 1 and 2
Chrysler Sterling Assembly Honda Indiana
Chrysler Sterling Stamping Honda East Liberty
Chrysler Toluca, Mexico Hyundai – India, Korea
Chrysler Saltillo, Mexico

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 RAFT GM Installations
Case Study Examples
GM Springhill, Tennessee Opel Kaiserslautern, Germany

- 28 portable guns in a new - 5 robot weld cells for Epsilon

installation for Chevrolet Equinox - Average number of weld schedules per
- Single trigger multiple stack-up robot: 40
- Stack-up range is from 2.0mm - Expulsion reduced to less than 2%.
7.0mm in some guns - Weld time control: average extension is
- Reduced the number of guns 11 m Sec over 128,000 welds
required by 30% - Tip Dress Verification implemented
- Expulsion reduced from 80% to - Verification of part loading implemented
less than 5% over past systems - Weld quality maintained

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RAFT Further information
– WTC Learning Center

http://www.weldtechcorp.com/learning-center.html

Setting up RAFT for Portable DC Weld Gun Station

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