At Yanfeng Automotive Interiors in Louisville, Kentucky, US, the Emitted Energy team integrated a thermal process monitoring system into the infrared welding of Ford Escape defroster-grille components.
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About Yanfeng Automotive Interiors
Yanfeng Automotive Interiors, headquartered in Shanghai, is the world’s leading supplier of instrument panels and cockpit systems, door panels, floor consoles and overhead consoles.
The company has more than 90 manufacturing and technical centers in 17 countries and employs over 28,000 people globally. Yanfeng has made it its mission to continuously innovate and leverage its capabilities to enhance its position as a trendsetter in the global automotive industry.
Why infrared welding in plastic joining
Plastic plays an increasingly important role in the automotive industry. One reason is that plastics’ lightweight nature enables more fuel-efficient vehicles, and they allow substantial design freedom and flexibility.
One of the first steps in plastic production is transforming raw materials, like polymers, into plastic parts for cockpit components, instrument panels, door panels, floor consoles, and more. In the next stage, the plastic parts need to be assembled.
Some of these parts need to fit together very tightly, and one of the best technologies for this is infrared welding, also referred to as plastic joining. This welding technique is used for challenging materials and large-part assembly with high-strength and hermetic requirements.
During an infrared welding process, two part halves are held rigidly in position near an infrared emitting platen to melt the joining surfaces. The platen is then removed and the part halves are driven together and allowed to resolidify under pressure.
PROBLEM
Machine parameters tell you what the equipment was commanded to do. Thermal imaging tells you what actually happened.
Like many automotive manufacturers, Yanfeng faced an industry-wide challenge: verifying joint integrity on high-volume plastic welding lines where structural joints must withstand continuous vibration, thermal cycling, and severe impact loads over the vehicle’s lifespan.
Yanfeng wanted to optimize its quality assessment and monitoring practices for producing defroster grills for Ford Escape vehicles. The company already used IR welding to join parts of the defroster grills. Known for its best-in-class product offering, Yanfeng needed a solution to eliminate a lengthy manual inspection process.
Shortly after installing the new IR welding machine, there was no real way of telling how well the weld had succeeded, except by doing a visual check after the heat cycle of the welding machine.
“Product quality is of utmost importance at Yanfeng, so we try to assess this to the best of our possibilities. This visual check also meant that we had to stop the production flow and pull the welded plastic parts apart. Usually, we were taking out one to two pieces per hour as a way of sample inspection. Clearly this was insufficient and no guarantee for 100% product quality. That's why we needed to look out for an alternative quality monitoring solution, one that does not interrupt the production flow, and also one that catches possible problems before they can occur.”
Kevin Germain, Manufacturing Engineer, Yanfeng (Louisville)
SOLUTION
Continuous, non-destructive thermal monitoring from Emitted Energy
Emitted Energy is a Platinum Partner with FLIR as an automation camera distributor and system integrator. Thermal imaging cameras can be used for nondestructive testing and evaluation of IR welds by examining subsurface features (e.g., defects and anomalies) visible on the investigated surface. This is the solution the Yanfeng team was looking for.
Handheld thermal imaging cameras were not enough.
“We already experimented with the use of a small, handheld thermal imaging camera from FLIR, so we knew what thermal imaging could do. But for this check with the thermal imager, we had to stop the machine to look at the plastic part after the heat cycle in the welding process. This was also not reliable enough.”
Kevin Germain, Manufacturing Engineer, Yanfeng
Emitted Energy created a solution that allows for continuous quality monitoring and 100% reliability.
“Thermal imaging cameras can give an accurate image in non-contact mode of the temperature of the plastic parts during the welding process inside the IR welding machine. These cameras trigger an alarm when a temperature threshold is exceeded and by means of advanced analytics software, they can differentiate between a good and a bad weld pattern.”
Roy Ray, CEO, Emitted Energy
As a Platinum Integrated FLIR Partner, Emitted Energy implemented FLIR cameras for automation applications, fully controlled by a PC — as the imaging foundation of the system.
Monitoring the IR weld
Emitted Energy installed four FLIR thermal imaging cameras on the IR welding machine used for the Ford Escape defroster grille. The cameras are monitoring 40 regions of interest on the plastic parts after the heat cycle. Combined with Emitted Energy’s ADVISOR Thermal Process Monitoring SystemTM, powered by their proprietary analysis software EnlightenTM, they detect when temperatures fall within the upper and lower control limits.
If the regions of interest fall within the limits, the software sends a pass signal to the machine PLC and continues the welding process.
If any region of interest falls outside the upper or lower temperature control limits, the software analytics send a “fail signal” to the PLC, which faults the machine and stops the welding process. An operator can then remove the rejected part, visually inspect it, and restart the operation.
RESULT
Repeatable weld quality, reduced scrap, and faster response
“The FLIR thermal imaging cameras allow us to continually monitor the IR weld quality without interrupting the welding process, even when nobody is attending the IR welding machine, and we can catch possible issues before they actually happen. Since we no longer have to take the welded plastic components apart, we have also been able to significantly reduce the scrap rate.”
Kevin Germain, Manufacturing Engineer, Yanfeng
The ADVISOR also enables Yanfeng to map heat trends over time and combine this information with additional data from other sensors, such as squeeze pressure and IR heater voltage.
“With (Emitted Energy's thermal process monitoring and) the FLIR cameras installed, we can now ensure more repeatable welding quality, and whenever an issue does occur, we can increase our response time whenever the maintenance team needs to be called in.”
Kevin Germain, Manufacturing Engineer, Yanfeng
Through Emitted Energy’s integration expertise with the ADVISOR and FLIR thermal imaging technology, Yanfeng now ensures impeccable, repeatable IR weld quality.
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