A Seam Measurement Method Based on Micro Depth of Field for Laser Welding

For the seam feature measurement of the tight butt joint without misalignment in laser welding, current vision sensor cannot obtain the seam gap width and seam position stably and reliably. In this paper, a seam measurement method based on the micro depth of field is proposed. A four times optical magnification lens, a CCD/CMOS camera and an external LED lighting unit are used to constitute the measure system, which can be used for the tight butt joint for laser welding. Experiment indicated that it can obtain the seam gap width and seam position stably and correctly. With the method, seam surface normal vector also can be measured. The measurement accuracy for the seam gap width and seam position is 5 µm and 6 µm, respectively. Furthermore, the narrowest welding seam gap that can be measured by this method is 0.02 mm, which is fully satisfied the demand of the seam measurement in laser welding.