Advanced Control of a Resistance Spot Welding System

This paper deals with a middle-frequency resistance spot welding system. It consists of an input converter, welding transformer, and a full-wave rectifier mounted at the transformer secondary. The welding current at the full-wave rectifier output is normally controlled by the pulse width modulated primary voltage of the transformer supplied by the input converter. The unequal ohmic resistances of the two transformer's secondary circuits and the different characteristics of the diodes of output rectifier certainly lead to the magnetic saturation which, consequently, causes the unwanted spikes in the transformer's primary current and over-current protection switch-off. This disadvantage of classical spot welding systems is completely eliminated by the proposed advanced hysteresis controller (AHC), which keeps transformer iron core saturation within prescribed bounds regardless of how unequal the ohmic resistances and diodes' characteristics in the transformer's secondary circuits are. This is achieved by a combined closed-loop control of the welding current and closed-loop control of the iron core saturation level. The proposed AHC assures a very short rise time of the welding current and the best possible utilization of the transformer iron core.