21st Century Smart Weld Inspection Tool

Objective:

Develop a portable weld inspection tool optimized for shipyard weld joints, applicable to typical shipyard weld quality standards and can be used for specific pipe and hull fabrication.

Summary:

This project will develop a portable, hand-held visual weld inspection tool that is optimized for inspection of pre-weld and post-weld joints. It will be applicable to typical shipyard weld quality standards and usable for specific pipe and hull fabrication. The basis for this development is the existing Servo Robot Wiki-Scan portable weld inspection tool. The Weld Inspection Tool will be able to reduce rework by eliminating redundant inspections where multiple levels of people inspect the same weld. Additionally, the Weld Inspection Tool will reduce overwelding, minimize inspection paper work and measure difficult to access welds. The Weld Inspection Tool is innovative in advancing the manual visual inspection process to a semi‐automatic method potentially capable of providing much more accurate, consistent results at lower costs. By collecting quality data, the tool may facilitate tracking and improving welder quality performance. Additionally, the Weld Inspection Tool provides a permanent record (photo, file, report & database) of results.

Key Deliverables:

Final Report – Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Point of Contact:

Jeff Noruk, Servo Robot