Development Of Multifunctional Flash Butt Welding Machine

The rail flash butt welding machines are widely used in continuous welded rail track in our country, but they are mainly imported abroad. After synthesizing researches which our country have achieved, a multifunctional flash butt welding machine with the functions including thermal and mechanical simulation, continuous flashing, flashing with intermittent preheating, pulsed flashing etc, has been developed, it is great significant to apply this machine into the study of welding melting cycles, welding control technique, making the rail welding equipment in our country.The multifunctional flash butt welding machine was developed including mechanical system and control system. The welding machine head is mobile welder, which is not only compact, easy to center-adjusted, but also has the great force mechanisms of clamp and upset. The control system adopted Industrial Personal Computer (IPC) as the main computer, and adopted Programmable Logic Computer (PLC) as the subordinate computer. The voltage and current can be precisely controlled through RMS converter. Applying Electro-Hydraulic Proportional Valve, the system realizes the velocity control of flash and upset. The new serial communication software between PLC and EPC was designed, which is convenient to set the welding parameters and collect temperature. The parameters values such as welding current, welding voltage, oil pressure etc, are collected at high sampling frequency by the IPC. which can be used to analysis the welding quality and improve the system of quality control.The results of design, assembly and tests can be demonstrated as followings. The designed mechanisms of clamp, center-adjusted and upset are reasonable, the Electro-Hydraulic control system realizes the flexible control and closed-loop control of moving clamp, which is benefit to welding current control. The RMS converters of voltage and current have the advantages of high speed and precision, and with the feedback of RMS, the fluctuate of power voltage can be compensated at high precision. Based on the serial communication software between PLC and IPC, the parameters values are easy to be modified on the friendly interfaces. FX2N-2LC Temperature Control Block has a control characteristic of high precision. The whole hardware has high capability of anti-interference, and the software can satisfy many welding procedure tests and the quality analysis.