Portable System for the Measure of Efficiency in Arc Welding Processes

In recent years, the monitoring of the energy consumption in the industrial processes shows a growing interest due to its strong fallout on environmental pollution and environmental sustainability. On this purpose, this paper deals with the design of a portable Digital Acquisition system (DAQ) tailored for monitoring the energy consumption in different classes of welding machines. The proposed system is a multichannel DAQ able to measure the overall power consumption at the input of the machine (including those relative to the secondary equipment present in the welding process as gas pumps, chillers, etc.) together with some other physical quantities in output (which depend on the features own of the welding machine). The results of these measurements will be deeply investigated and, by a proper metallurgical analysis, related to the mechanical characteristics of the welted joint. Some results on preliminary measures performed on a Tungsten Inert Gas (TIG) welding machine in a real industrial welding process will be shown in the paper.