Hitachi, Ltd.

Yohichi Takahashi

Hiroyuki Takahashi

Junichiro Morisawa

Yasuaki Sugie

A welding apparatus with monitor means including a welding torch having an electrode located in the vicinity of its forward end and supported at its rearward portion by a welding head for rotational movement about its longitudinal axis and back-and-forth reciprocatory movement along the longitudinal axis. The welding torch further includes an electric conductor covered at its outer periphery with an insulator and formed with a gas sump in the vicinity of the electrode. The electric conductor has defined therein a gas supply passageway for supplying gas shield gas, a bore for allowing an image guide and a light guide to extend therethrough, and a bore for allowing a fluid to flow therethrough to cool the electric conductor. The image guide and light guide have their forward ends located in the gas sump, so that they can command a view of outside through guide openings serving concurrently as gas ejecting ports for ejecting the shield gas therethrough. A filter is located at the other end of the image guide, and an industrial television camera and a television receiver are mounted for converting optical images formed on the filter to television pictures to enable monitoring of welding operations to be effected.

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Hitachi, Japan

Yohichi Takahashi