Concurrent Technologies Corp. project: Can AI augment friction stir welding?
Apr. 28—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Johnstown-based Concurrent Technologies Corp. is prototyping artificial intelligence to augment friction stir welding equipment.
The friction stir welding method makes no sparks and uses no gases; there is no electric current at the weld. Instead, it uses friction between the tool and the material to heat, soften and "stir" material across a joint to produce a solid-state weld.
CTC's friction stir welding machinery is able to seam together large metal plates such as those found in ships and vehicles.
CTC's friction stir welding technicians are able to observe what makes a good weld or a bad weld after many years of experience — and the company believes it can have AI learn the same patterns that are mastered by seasoned welders, said Alan Briggs, CTC machine intelligence engineer.
A working prototype may be more than a year out.
"An expert has experience that gives them the ability to see these different patterns," Briggs said. "After you've done it many, many times, you see, for example, if this is happening with the weld, change the plunge force; if you see that happening with the weld, change the travel speed. So our intuition is to ask, 'Can we use AI to find patterns in the absence of 40 years' experience?' "
The company's motivation for developing the AI is to make better and safer welds, more consistently and more efficiently, Briggs said.
"If in pursuit of that goal we help address the forthcoming lack of skilled welders, that would be a secondary benefit," he said. "I'm in meetings with government, and I hear senior government leaders talk about what happens over time as we lose expertise in the big picture, but we are approaching it more from a bottom-up perspective: 'How can we make better welds and better products and help employees in there to do it more efficiently?' "
He said AI is being layered into operations such as friction stir welding in which there are observable patterns that can be detected by feeding data to AI.
"When we think about operation of AI, the end state — what you interact with — of true AI is made up of a lot of small successes through a phased approach along the way," he said.
CTC's friction stir welding machinery is at the company's headquarters in Johnstown, and the company has also developed a portable friction stir welding machine that can be transported to where it's needed.
"CTC is in a unique position to develop technologies like artificial intelligence in friction stir welding because we have expertise in historically disparate domains," Briggs said.
CTC is an independent, nonprofit, applied scientific research and development professional services organization. The company says it designs, prototypes and builds solutions for U.S. national security and private industry with the goal of retaining the country's technological advantage and ensuring the primacy of American manufacturing.
"There aren't any other organizations we are familiar with that share the same depth of experience in both AI and engineering and manufacturing," Briggs said. "We have people who are really good at friction stir welding and others really good at AI. We see that might be a novel way for us to add value by bringing those two things together."
