[HN Gopher] Augmented Reality Welding System
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Augmented Reality Welding System
Author : 1970-01-01
Score : 81 points
Date : 2023-03-09 02:38 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.millerwelds.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.millerwelds.com)
| giantg2 wrote:
| Looks like a training helmet/system.
|
| It seems like a lot of weld quality is evident through visual
| inspection. It would be interesting if you could use computer
| vision to rate the weld in near real time to help identify if the
| setting might need to be optimized before needing to redo the
| entire seam.
| Configure0251 wrote:
| It does provide real time feedback, apparently. The product
| video shows this and scoring capabilities in the software.
| giantg2 wrote:
| But for a make believe weld, not a real one.
| Oktokolo wrote:
| This is so extremely underwhelming that just a "meh" really
| doesn't cut it.
|
| What would really help welders would be actual augmented reality
| welding - like you have a monitor in your helmet which shows you
| the environment in normal daylight with high contrast and also
| shows you the puddle under the arc in normal daylight with high
| contrast - but doesn't show you the blinding bright arc itself
| (instead it shows a convenient indicater for where the arc hits
| the surface and whether you are too near or too far from the
| surface with the gun).
|
| Basically welding as if you had eyes capable of filtering out the
| bright arc without any reduction of contrast or brightness
| anywhere else. For extra satisfaction add some microstabilization
| to the gun, so it can help you keep the tungsten needle at the
| optimal distance to the surface despite your hands becoming more
| jittery as you age.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'd imagine a thermal camera could be useful too.
| zamnos wrote:
| I'd be fascinated to hear about attempts. It seems like that
| the welding spot would be bright enough to overwhelm the
| sensor making it difficult to get anything out from it other
| than white
| convolvatron wrote:
| certainly in the immediate vicinity of the arc. the secret
| would be to accommodate for that in the exposure. you're
| also going to throw out the most energetic parts of the
| spectrum with a filter.
|
| idk if thermal would be that useful for steel, especially
| if you can clearly resolve the boundary of the melt pool -
| but for high conductivity metals like copper and aluminum,
| it might be a real godsend. the problem with these is that
| since they wick heat away, you need to build up the
| temperature of the whole piece until its close to melting,
| and then just push it over with the arc. its pretty common
| to take it too far and have a big section of work turn into
| a slaggy mess.
| metal_am wrote:
| This is definitely done in the research world. The
| flash/brightness from the arc isn't an issue because it's a
| different wavelength (UV vs. IR).
| bunabhucan wrote:
| It's going to have mount a headset on a already bulky face
| shield and do a better job than the existing solutions. I'm
| just thinking about how hard it can be to get a vr headset
| aligned- with two free hands. Many people set up and then nod
| forward to get the shield down.
|
| I could see a solution that provided off bore data/feedback but
| that could probably be managed with a mini led projector or
| just leds since it's so dark already.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| I've wished for this product for years.
|
| Steve Mann created a prototype yeeaarrss ago that looks
| incredible, but no one has taken it to the commercial stage
| yet: http://wearcam.org/mannventions-password-
| stefanosmannaz13/ma...
| originalcopying wrote:
| edit: deleted
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I mean augmented reality has been extremely hard even for
| normal uses without the extreme environment of welding
| involved. Even Apple still hasn't nailed it yet according
| to reports. Hard to see how a welding company could succeed
| where Apple and Meta struggle.
| spookie wrote:
| AR is used today in automotive manufacture and repair
| (Bosch), and surgery (Mount Sinai, John Hopkins). There's
| also military applications, or construction. Meta is not,
| by a long shot, on the forefront of actual _uses_ of the
| technology. Their hardware, and ease of use is top notch,
| no question about it.
|
| But there are real, and pratical use cases out there done
| by smaller companies in specialized fields. The issue
| lies in creating something with mainstream appeal, which
| I do agree with you, that's a whole other story.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I am not a welder.
|
| That being said, I'd imagine the active circuitry required
| to capture and process the images in realtime (or 30fps, in
| this case) is expensive and bulkier than what's currently
| used. Processing stereoscopic 2048x2048 HDR streams is no
| easy task, you'd basically be looking at a VR helmet once
| you consider where to put battery and compute unit.
|
| It's a cool invention, but probably one of those "analog
| computer" ideas that's harder to scale/apply than the
| cheaper alternatives.
| PanMan wrote:
| Obviously the high dynamic range is a challenge, but
| besides that: car reverse camera's cost a few bucks, I
| don't think this would need to be Way more expensive. It
| also doesn't have to be stereoscopic and 2048x2048 I'd
| say... - it would quickly be a step up from the current
| solution which only allows you to see the welding arc
| convolvatron wrote:
| welding helmets can exceed $1k already. and at a working
| minimum of $80/hr, if you can improve quality and reduce
| time (rework is the worst thing here - it never comes out
| right, takes forever, and so its often more cost
| effective to start the work from the beginning), the
| economics might easily work out..especially at the higher
| end
| Oktokolo wrote:
| The link mentions that the topic is mined with a patent.
| Sadly makes a lot of sense for no one even daring to think
| about innovating in that field then.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I wonder what could manage that... maybe some kind of sensor
| fusion with ultrasound combined with dead reckoning and
| positioning and attitude sensor in the gun?
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Nah, it's plenty enough to use two (or more) cameras where
| one has a hefty ND filter, then you use an HDR algorithm to
| fuse the images.
| m463 wrote:
| I agree - I imagine that welding is generating all KINDS of
| crazy UV emissions that get through the filters and eventually
| kill your retina. Add the fact that welders are probably
| "second-hand smoking" while welding and I think there's a real
| opportunity to help society.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| dieselgate wrote:
| This is cool from a tech perspective but the rest of me is
| cringing because there's simply nothing left untouched by tech. I
| love welding because it's so dang "real".
|
| Makes sense from a teaching perspective (I guess) - certainly
| nice to cut down on material and consumable costs, and cutting
| and grinding materials.
|
| What about pipe though? It seems this product only offers flat
| stock welding which seems like a Major limitation for real world
| welding practice.
|
| Truly hope the "feature" of rod sticking and undercut are built
| into the software - those are major things to learn when starting
| out
|
| Edit: guess the product is more MIG/wire feed focused so maybe
| rod stick is not relevant here
| nickpeterson wrote:
| I thought this said augmented reality 'wedding' service and began
| wondering how that would work out...
| contingencies wrote:
| IMHO manual welding is interesting but ultimately robot arms are
| coming down so far in price in the near future it's soon going to
| be more useful to just straight up train people how to specify
| work for the arms.
|
| Often really substantial experience is required to approach
| welding problems, including interpreting order intent (quantity
| and material related concerns such as jig and fixture design,
| adjacent process speed and cycle time affinities, likelihood of
| follow-on orders, etc.), interpreting drawings (often made by
| non-welders and potentially requiring feedback) plus
| understanding finished workpiece intent and loading, intermediate
| work holding and handling, welding process selection, shield gas
| and flow rate selection, manual dexterity and precision, bead
| material selection, optimal power levels, temperature monitoring,
| feed rates, environmental safety and pollution concerns,
| questions of finish including scratch prevention, grinding and
| polishing, cleaning, and potentially subsequent surface
| treatment, inspection and testing, etc.
|
| If anyone wants to work on automation for these sorts of
| fabrication related problems, we will be hiring in a few months.
| shirleyquirk wrote:
| While it saddens me to hear what you're saying, I literally
| left my career as a blacksmith for embedded because even the
| interesting bespoke projects are all going to CNC. I'd be
| interested in your project, sounds like it's a rare
| intersection of my domains of interest
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Pretty neat, looks like it would let you teach in a regular
| classroom, and would cut down on materials costs by a huge
| amount.
|
| Would be cool to see what a tig teaching system would look like
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Would be cool to see what a tig teaching system would look
| like
|
| The TIG setup: https://youtu.be/xCbmFFPSF7o?t=77
| shirleyquirk wrote:
| Ok this changed my mind about this tech. Tig welding really
| takes thousands of hours to learn, you do get limited by how
| much material you can burn through
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Materials costs? Honestly? It would take decades, what kind of
| materials do you think starting welders are practicing on?
| Grade2 titanium?
| dieselgate wrote:
| i mean, even steel isn't _that_ cheap. not to mention Al.
|
| I'm skeptical of the product myself but there's a lot of
| materials/equipment for welding: grinders, PPE, physical
| space to do stuff, cutoff saws (I want an Evolution cold cut
| saw but it's not worth the price for me right now),
| consumables, gasses etc.
|
| Edit: but yeah all those are likely less than the
| "affordable" MSRP of 3150 clams - i've always been curious
| who Miller's target clients are, in my experience they have
| great tech and products but are super expensive. YesWelder is
| a better alternative in my opinion fwiw
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Schools already have the equipment, scrap steel isn't
| expensive and most trade schools with metal shops have a
| bunch lying around. Sure blades and grinding wheels need to
| be changed out sometimes but for an established program
| this product seems rather silly to me. The student gets the
| absolute minimal exposure with basically no real practice
|
| Anyone practicing on aluminum has already been welding for
| a while so again this product would be useless for them. I
| don't think any reasonable program would start out new
| students on aluminum
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Oooo... That'd be fun. I could see there being a bit more
| benefits with a tig system like this, insofar as being able to
| spend more time on the technique and getting feedback from the
| system on your timing and consistency.
| binarymax wrote:
| I suck at welding. I have a tig welder, and I'm not good at it.
| I've taken a short course, but it's not enough.
|
| As someone who needs more education and practice, I don't
| understand how this can help. Like, isn't the only way to learn
| how to weld actually welding? Can a simulation be good enough? I
| have my doubts.
|
| Sure this can simulate holding stuff and what would happen in
| some conditions.
|
| I doubt this makes a big difference because the things that screw
| up welding isn't just the motion. It's the prep and cleanliness
| of the material, the shape and cleanliness of the tungsten rod,
| the position of the rod in the cup, the downdraft, and all kinds
| of crazy details that I don't think can be simulated and these
| things need to be hard won by real practice.
| inconceivable wrote:
| yea, obviously learning is doing. but this looks to me like a
| product targeted at trade schools, to be used in the very very
| first stages of an introductory class. instead of using
| workshop space and materials to do intro concepts it can be
| done in a normal room, freeing up the workshop during that time
| slot for other uses.
|
| schools are a continuous pipeline of new students to graduates.
| elil17 wrote:
| I'd imagine this tool is meant for welding schools who want to
| be able to do something like:
|
| 1) Pull intro classes out of their shop to increase capacity 2)
| Reduce costs associated with power/gas/metal/etc. 3) Give
| people a taste of what welding is like without having to do
| safety training
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Reduce costs by charging another 3-4k for new equipment?
| Brilliant
| tekla wrote:
| Only someone who hasnt welded would think this is something
| amyone wants.
|
| Welding is a very "real world" activity. Cleaning things
| properly takes a non insigificant amount of time and you
| really need to get a feel for the materials.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this thing is exclusively for people who
| haven't welded before...
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Yea and it wouldn't get them any closer to actually
| welding. Just have them... Actually weld? It was pretty
| easy for me to pick up multiple techniques in high
| school, no augmented reality system needed
| spookie wrote:
| Technology can be used to augment and speed up human
| cognition and learning. Take it as a guide, not as the end
| all be all tool.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If I'm paying for welding classes it's damn well going to be
| on actual gear.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I think that if you made people "get good" on the simulator
| before they touched the real thing they'd get better at the
| real thing much faster/cheaper.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| I think you overestimate the expense of scrap metal for
| laying practice beads. This simulator is _waaaay_ more
| expensive
| metal_am wrote:
| Wire and gas costs aren't the issue. It's the cost of the
| welding machine because only one person can use it at a
| time. You can buy multiples of these for the cost of one
| industrial machine.
| elihu wrote:
| I'd imagine that space requirements are pretty
| significant too. I've never taken a welding class so I
| don't know how it's normally done, but it seems like
| having thirty people in a room, even a big one, would be
| pretty tough to do while maintaining appropriate
| ventilation and without people arc-flashing each other.
| Whereas I could see having thirty people in a normal
| classroom using this augmented reality system. Or using
| it while they wait for their turn at a real welding
| station.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| Does a welding school not have multiple welding machines
| already? Are they buying new machines every year?
|
| Is it actually less expensive than a MIG welder from the
| same company?
|
| https://www.millerwelds.com/equipment/welders/mig-
| gmaw/mille...
| convolvatron wrote:
| I've worked with the sub-$1k 200A knockoffs and they are
| quite usable
| metal_am wrote:
| That's why I specified an industrial machine. No fab shop
| is going to use a 20% duty cycle machine. Granted, you
| can weld just as well with a cheap machine.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| A trade school is not an industrial fab shop
| [deleted]
| neuralRiot wrote:
| The only advantage i see for this system is that it eliminates
| the liability of students working with real welding equipment.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I learned to weld in high school. The first priority is
| safety education. While this is neat, that is a very massive
| missing element that students must become familiar with when
| learning to weld.
| elihu wrote:
| It looks like this AR welding product from Miller is specific
| to MIG. A TIG simulator would be interesting, but it would
| probably be a lot more work to pull off convincingly.
|
| (For the non-welders reading this: with TIG welding you hold a
| "torch" in one hand that has a tungsten electrode and it blows
| an inert gas such as argon at the work area, and in the other
| hand you have welding rod that you periodically dip into the
| pool. MIG, on the other hand, uses a torch where the filler rod
| is the electrode, and there's a motorized feeder that's
| constantly extending the filler rod as you weld.)
|
| edit: It looks like Miller do also have a virtual TIG setup,
| someone else posted a link to it. It looks pretty good,
| actually.
| pydry wrote:
| My first thought watching this video was that its primary use
| is probably going to be weeding out people who would never be
| good at it e.g. because they lack a steady hand or lack hand
| eye coordination.
| elihu wrote:
| In my experience (learning aluminum TIG at a hobbyist level)
| having a "steady hand" is all about setting things up from
| the start so your torch hand always has something stable to
| rest against.
|
| There will, of course, be people on either extreme who either
| have a stable enough hand that they don't need to rest on
| anything, or who have hands that are so shaky that propping
| against something doesn't help, but I think for the ordinary
| able-bodied person it just takes some practice and careful
| attention to workspace setup.
|
| I've never done MIG, but I imagine it's a bit less of an
| issue since you aren't constantly trying to get the electrode
| as close as possible without ever touching. I could see this
| product being pretty good at telling students "hey, you're
| holding the torch at the wrong angle" or "you're going to
| fast" or whatever. Basically, teaching students a few good
| habits from the beginning.
| bityard wrote:
| These aren't used as teaching tools so much as "demo" tools.
| They are the rough welding equivalent to running a flight
| simulator on a laptop with a single USB joystick. They are good
| for bringing out to trade shows, job fairs, and other marketing
| venues to sort-of simulate what it's like to weld something,
| with all the dangers removed.
| petee wrote:
| Hi, as a fellow amateur tig-er, I'd highly recommend checking
| out _Weldingtipsandtricks_ on YouTube, the guy is a great
| teacher, and there are plenty of troubleshooting topics for new
| welders. He helped drastically improve my aluminum welding
| dieselgate wrote:
| Hell yea Youtube U.! That's how I learned to weld as well,
| saw an open box arc welder at harbor freight and started
| watching and sticking rods.
|
| Meltin' Metal Anthony has a good channel, though he's gotten
| super crass the past year (maybe i didn't notice it before?)
| but still relevant.
|
| WeldTube and their videos are good too, those guys are great
| at teaching and are good for a laugh sometimes too
|
| All those above can be seen on youtube. I don't tig but have
| watched a lot of videos on it and there's so much to learn
| from what's out there
| Arcanum-XIII wrote:
| My father was the director of a vocational school and for the
| beginner those system seems to help.
|
| I myself took some lesson for tig - as other have said, a big
| part of it was cleaning up and prepping. Prepping the tungstene
| every minutes made you motivated to improve fast :D
|
| With practice, I can weld in some complicated position. The
| inconfortable way of working is the biggest issue (under a tube
| with a mirror for example, with my left hand holding the
| electrode as a right handed man... ). Nothing can teach you
| that beside doing it. And it will happen, only more often in a
| boiler room :D
| convolvatron wrote:
| in the most constructive way possible - you're just being lazy
|
| it just takes practice as you say, and its the kind of practice
| where feedback is good and nearly instantaneous. it also goes
| pretty fast. by the 40th hour of welding you should be doing a
| passibly good job.
|
| yes, you will have to struggle some with issues like bridging,
| undercutting, porosity, and under-penetration. all those are
| tractable and pretty easy to debug.
|
| and yeah, if your major problem is cleaning the work or your
| tungsten, then maybe welding isn't for you...but I kinda doubt
| it
|
| finishing is where you can really distinguish between the
| professionals and the weekend warriors.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm an amateur welder too. I suspect this is helpful for
| bringing down the cost for initial training. You'll still need
| hands-on, but this will get you the first 40% to 60%.
|
| Beyond the welder and material for training, facilities also
| need to have robust electrical supplies, welding tables, and
| inert gas supplies. This cuts all of that out.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Is this a $3000 app with some repurposed plastic pieces and a
| booklet of stickers?
|
| If so... I love it.
|
| I'd be curious if anyone has experience with the system (and with
| welding) and could describe the feedback that it's able to
| provide. I rely so heavily on the sound of the bead being laid,
| and I can't imagine this can even semi-reliably convey the same
| vast amount of information as you can glean from your ears.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Haha, man. Just imagine how much an iPhone would cost if Apple
| made a few thousand of them per year instead of however many
| they're cranking out now
| dymk wrote:
| I learned welding in high-school so I'm far from a
| professional. But I agree you get a lot of feedback from the
| tactical sensation of the stick / filament and the sound, which
| would be hard to reproduce in an app.
|
| I've heard from people who have used this VR welding system
| that there are some key differences between it and real
| welding, notably for the stick welder version. To simulate the
| stick being consumed, a servo motor pulls the stick through the
| back of the handheld part. This results in the balance of the
| handheld part changing noticeably as you weld.
| thenobsta wrote:
| Like other comments, I agree that the technology leaves something
| to be desired. However, I learned welding from a community
| college in high school. I wasted A LOT of welding rod/wire and
| metal just getting the pacing and angles correct. I could imagine
| a tool like this helping someone grease the groove without so
| much wasted resources.
| glennvtx wrote:
| Unnecessary.. What would be nice though is a helmet with a camera
| to replace regular auto-darkening hoods. Maybe with bluetooth so
| you could rock out on the job, maybe some cams in the back for
| fire detection.
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