A Study on the Development of a Welding Carriage System for Vertical Weld

Thick-shell welding for super-sized oil storage tanks is currently done manually, which causes deterioration in quality and a lack of uniformity due to frequent rewelding. The limitations of the external environment must also be considered for manual welding. This paper describes the development of a carriage system for automatic vertical welding to increase reliability, reduce cost, and enhance productivity. The system consists of a welding platform, carriage device, and control unit, which were conceptually designed according to design specifications and manufactured with modular parts. In addition, the structure was analyzed for safety and to predict design problems in advance, and the results are reflected in reviewing the design. To evaluate the performance of the system, a tensile test, bending test, and weld time test were carried out, and the results were satisfactory. The time required for automatic weld was greatly improved by more than 87%, compared to the manual welding time.