WELDING APPLICATION

Automate the welding process of a bicycle frame to improve its weld efficiency

THE PROBLEM

Design and development of an offline programming system to generate a welding path and improve the welding performance based on the welding parameters autonomously.

HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE

I was an CAD-based OLP software designer and developer for this project for a period of 1 year.

MAKE OF THE TEAM

The team comprises of 1 project adviser, 1 software design and developer, and 1 computer vision.

KEY GOAL

Automation of the process to improve the welding performance.

MY ROLE

I was the one who is responsible to design the architecture and develop the system until the product.

To study the welding process, I have gone through several research papers and available tools. It helped me to design the architecture and user-interface. I was also in charge of developing an algorithm for path planning and 2-DOF robot kinematics.

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

We kicked of the research visiting few bicycle industries.

The user of this product mostly from shop level (manufacturing or welding) engineer to an expert.

We gathered information about the current way of the welding task, the difficulties, and the requirements to include in a new system. I kept an open mind and considered everything about my user by listening to them and learning about the complexity of their needs.

BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS

We started from the user feedback, brainstorming to come with an innovative solution to develop a common system for industries.

Discover: I started discovering the challenges from the existing process of welding in industries from user feedback. In this phase, we cleared the perspective of having an innovative solution.
Ideate: All the challenges derived from the discovery phase helped to design the system architecture with the inclusion of novel features to meet the goals.
Conceptualization: As a responsible person, I ideated around each definition to develop algorithms for the development of the offline programming platform.
Usability: I tested the product during multiple stages of the development to check the performance of the proposed solution.

LESSONS LEARNED

As a researcher, we are often need to come with innovative technologies to tackle challenges for the benefits and profitability of industries.

As a developer, arise with novel solutions and algorithms in this entire research. Additionally, learned about the user study to design the user-based user interface to build an intuitive environment.

Understanding the complete process of product design and development in this software process.