Seam Tracking
The sensor watches the joint ahead of the torch throughout the weld; deviations caused by thermal growth and fixture tolerance are corrected live. Even if the part bends or shifts slightly, the robot is never reprogrammed; the weld path stays true from start to finish on long seams.
Live In-Process Correction
The technology's role in the cell
The part heats up and moves while welding. On long seams the position at the start is not the position at the end; heat input pulls the workpiece. The theoretical path in the program no longer shows where the joint actually is.
Seam tracking closes that gap while the weld is running. The robot welds the joint the sensor sees rather than the taught path, correcting the trajectory as deviation is measured.
Two methods are used together. Through-arc sensing derives joint position from the electrical oscillation of the arc itself; it needs no extra hardware and works well on fillet welds. Laser seam tracking uses an optical sensor ahead of the torch for higher precision on thin plate, butt joints and geometries where arc sensing falls short.
Touch sensing completes the picture: before welding, the robot touches the part to find its real position, compensating fixture tolerance and part placement error.
Capabilities
- Optical seam tracking sensors
- Arc-glare-resistant filtering
- Tack-weld skipping algorithms
See this technology on your own part.
We start with a sample welding trial and evaluate the results together.