Festo Corporation

William E Janssens

Michael Zona

Thomas Cusumano

Louis Ariosto

Tarek El-Sawaf

A fully programmable servo-pneumatic modular weld gun having closed-loop position and pressure control generally includes a weld gun base module, a pneumatic cylinder with a movable piston having a first welding electrode, a J-shaped gun arm having a first end attached to the base module and a second end having a second welding electrode and a controller for providing closed-loop positioning and pressure control of the first welding electrode. The pneumatic cylinder includes an internal positioning encoder for detecting piston position and transmitting piston position information to the controller to control movement of the piston through a proportional flow control valve and a proportional pressure regulator. In a method for controlling the position of a spot weld gun weld tip, one of a plurality of binary bit position sequences corresponding to a different weld tip position are inputted to a controller that compares the inputted sequence to the actual position of the weld tip as detected by an internal positioning encoder. Based on the comparison, the controller activates a control valve of a pneumatic cylinder to extend or retract the weld tip. By manipulating the bit sequences and depending on the input address of the controller, other welding parameters such as weld pressure, equalizer pressure and tip dampening can be controlled.

Growing community of inventors

Canton, MI, United States of America

William E Janssens