Direct Process Control in Resistance Spot Welding in the Series Production Line

Resistance Spot Welding (RSW) is a key joining technology in large automotive body shops. Finding the ideal process settings is non-trivial, and domain knowledge is necessary to adjust the process in the series production line. In this work, we present a data-based process control to set the ideal process settings automatically. We define quality criteria, rate process settings based on the defined criteria, and determine the best settings. We apply our method to a large industrial dataset from automotive series manufacturing lines and validate it in the real world. We demonstrate how our method decreases process deviation, reduces expulsion, and increases overall process quality.