Patent Application
20070056943
This application claims the priority of German Patent Document No. 10 2005 043 583.1, filed Sep. 12, 2005, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
The invention relates to a wire feed measuring device for wire feed in MIG or MAG welding with a measuring head, which records the length of the fed wire, and a display device.
This type of device is known from Japanese Patent Document No. JP 632 212 02 for example. In this case, the welding wire is guided by on a reel and a counter reel pressed against it. With the movement of the welding wire in the feed direction, the reel is set into rotational motion. A meter connected directly to the reel directly displays the length of the feed.
The company of Linde markets a wire measuring device under the designation of DMG 2, which is structured in a similar way, but measures the wire length with a reel with a slot disk. The slot disk is illuminated and the changing light-dark signals are collected and forwarded to the electronics for evaluation. The device is built using conventional electronics. A cable connects the evaluation unit to the receiving unit. The evaluation unit is a single board computer, equipped with an 8085 processor.
A welding device is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,051,805 in which a read device for the wire feed is connected via a cable to a numeric display.
The disadvantage of the three devices is that it is only possible to read the fed wire length in the direct vicinity of the receiving device.
However, the wireless transmission of information is known in the field of welding. Thus, International Publication No. WO 02/085566, European Patent Document No. EP 1 341 635 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,639,182 describe devices in which commands can be forwarded to a wire feed device via radio or infrared.
As a result, the present invention provides a device, which can display the wire feed, where the user is not forced to remain in the direct vicinity of the welding head.
In accordance with the invention, the connection between the measuring head and the display device is wireless. It is advantageous that the user can now remain anywhere in the room without having to be too close to the hot environment of the welding head that might be compromised by hazardous vapors.
The display device is preferably a hand-held device or a pocket computer (pocket PC, Palm, PDA, mobile phone), which is portable and has the displays required to display the measured values.
A measuring wheel is preferably arranged in the measuring head, which records the movement mechanically, optically, electrically, magnetically or incrementally, converts this movement into an electrical signal via a rotation indicator and transmits it with a transmission unit to an output device.
Transmission can take place using all currently known forms of short-range communication, such as infrared or radio, e.g., via Bluetooth, RFCom, OBEX, Service Discovery Protocol or Logical Link Control and adaptation protocols. Using Connex RF or short range radio frequency formats is just as possible.
Evaluation can take place either directly on the measuring head or in the display device. Therefore, a complete microcomputer with a corresponding memory and evaluation program can be located in the wire measuring head. The data are then forwarded to the hand-held device via the interface. In this case, it's possible to see the wire speed and the arc burning time in online operation for example. This is important information for the practice of adjustment and for monitoring quality. It is also possible to forward the data from the measuring head via the interface (Bluetooth) to a commercially available pocket PC or a hand-held device. An appropriate evaluation program then displays the online data from the wire measurement.
It permits the complete evaluation of the welding task as well as a determination of costs. A preliminary calculation can also take place here as well as in the hand-held device. The costs of a weld can be calculated in the device if the costs per cm are known.
Advantages of the invention are as follows below.
The precision of measurement is improved by using a rotation indicator. In particular, if an incremental rotational indicator is used that has 360 parts on its measuring disk so that 360 pulses are produced with one rotation, which corresponds for example to a wire feed of 5 cm, sufficient precision of the measurement can be guaranteed.
It is possible to record and evaluate complete work pieces by using modern microelectronics and a high recording density. Only individual seams could be observed with previous measuring heads, an addition of the seams and group formation of the welding task was not possible. The addition that was previously performed manually can be accomplished electronically.
Using a wireless radio connection (preferably a Bluetooth interface) makes cable-less measurement possible even in a difficult work environment.
The user can remain far away from the welding location.
Already existing laptops, Palm PCs, pocket PCs or mobile phones can be used by simply installing new software, thereby clearly reducing expenditures for equipment.
One exemplary embodiment of the invention is explained in greater detail on the basis of the drawings, in which:
As
The foregoing disclosure has been set forth merely to illustrate the invention and is not intended to be limiting. Since modifications of the disclosed embodiments incorporating the spirit and substance of the invention may occur to persons skilled in the art, the invention should be construed to include everything within the scope of the appended claims and equivalents thereof.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 2005 043 583.1 | Sep 2005 | DE | national |
