8 ms·

Augmented Reality Welding System

110 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

NegativeLatency 4y ago
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
- digdugdirk 4y ago
  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.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  >Would be cool to see what a tig teaching system would look like The TIG setup: https://youtu.be/xCbmFFPSF7o?t=77 https://youtu.be/xCbmFFPSF7o?t=77
  - shirleyquirk 4y ago
    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 4y ago
  Materials costs? Honestly? It would take decades, what kind of materials do you think starting welders are practicing on? Grade2 titanium?
  - dieselgate 4y ago
    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 4y ago
      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
      - dieselgate 4y ago
        I agree and am still trying to determine the target use case here. Maybe Miller is so flush they developed it and don’t have much to lose, if people buy into the ecosystem good for Miller.
binarymax 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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.
  - gharman 4y ago
    IDK I’d say high school. I took a semester welding class at community college and we only spent 3 sessions on MIG (what this appears to be) before moving on to other processes. Most of the learning was around dealing with PPC, listening for the sizzle, identifying a good bead and common mistakes. This seems expensive for a one-class tool, especially since they still need the regular welders to complete the training.
- elil17 4y ago
  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
digdugdirk 4y ago
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.
- dymk 4y ago
  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.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  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
nickpeterson 4y ago
I thought this said augmented reality ‘wedding’ service and began wondering how that would work out…
Oktokolo 4y ago
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.
- reportingsjr 4y ago
  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/mannglas.htm http://wearcam.org/mannventions-password-stefanosmannaz13/ma...
  - originalcopying 4y ago
    edit: deleted
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      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.
      - 4y ago
giantg2 4y ago
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 4y ago
  It does provide real time feedback, apparently. The product video shows this and scoring capabilities in the software.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    But for a make believe weld, not a real one.
    - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      Sure but if the system can get your arc length, work angle, travel angle and travel speed dialed and consistent before you even plug in a real welder that's a decent increase in the throughput of a vocational facility with a given number of welding stations because now a fraction of the training can be performed in the classroom.
      - MrOwnPut 4y ago
        It'll never match the muscle memory. Practicing welding isn't that expensive either... After the safety courses you're never in the classroom. You should always be behind the stick with an instructor. It really only takes a summer in the barn to learn how to weld. Just put in 100 hours or so and you're good. 10000 and you're a pro, just like any trade, including programming.
        dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        It doesn't need to match muscle memory. It needs to lop off the first 10-20hr of actual welding where the instructor runs from booth to booth telling people to correct their arc length, angles and speed thereby increasing the efficiency by which welders can be trained.
dieselgate 4y ago
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
contingencies 4y ago
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 4y ago
  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
  - contingencies 4y ago
    Awesome, please send me an email. As well as fab, we do a lot of embedded, too.
- nullc 4y ago
  Doesn't that really only apply to mass production, a LOT of welding is one-off (or few-off) work used to connect parts (which may have been mass produced). If you mean to actually weld one off parts-- is the sensing technology in place to accomplish that? The speed and feed you go at depends on the ambient conditions and part geometry. Even if so, you have the problem that much welding is and must be done in-situ because the assembly is not transportable. In some cases you could bring in a robot arm, but even where you can that seems like lot of effort vs just sending a welder in.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
thenobsta 4y ago
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 4y ago
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.
thebeardisred 4y ago
It strikes me that no one pointed out to their product managers the liability (kernel sources, packages, updates, et al) that is shipping an ~~Android~~ mobile device as a part of their product.
rpmisms 4y ago
Welding is very physical, this simply won't work. In stick welding (the only kind I can do), if you don't pay attention to the feel of the rod, you'll get stuck. This is playing a welding video game. That could be useful for certain extremely limited circumstances, but this is not it.
bagels 4y ago
I wish it would simulate the heavy cabling/tubing that is attached to the welder. Can have someone simulate that by randomly tugging on the back of the welder to simulate the cable getting caught on things.
nayuki 4y ago
I got to play with this welding simulator at a Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) open house last year. Seemed cool.
daviddever23box 4y ago
There is nothing like the smell of hot, ground metal to remind you of the heights of career achievement possible in the industrial Midwest of America. A simulator will never give you that holes-burnt-into-your-shirt feeling. If you can weld, and you can code, the world is your **ing oyster. One of the two will pay your bills.

110 points by 1970-01-01 4y ago

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

digdugdirk 4y ago
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.
1970-01-01 4y ago
>Would be cool to see what a tig teaching system would look like The TIG setup: https://youtu.be/xCbmFFPSF7o?t=77 https://youtu.be/xCbmFFPSF7o?t=77
- shirleyquirk 4y ago
  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 4y ago
Materials costs? Honestly? It would take decades, what kind of materials do you think starting welders are practicing on? Grade2 titanium?
- dieselgate 4y ago
  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 4y ago
    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
    - dieselgate 4y ago
      I agree and am still trying to determine the target use case here. Maybe Miller is so flush they developed it and don’t have much to lose, if people buy into the ecosystem good for Miller.

binarymax 4y ago

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 4y ago
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.
- gharman 4y ago
  IDK I’d say high school. I took a semester welding class at community college and we only spent 3 sessions on MIG (what this appears to be) before moving on to other processes. Most of the learning was around dealing with PPC, listening for the sizzle, identifying a good bead and common mistakes. This seems expensive for a one-class tool, especially since they still need the regular welders to complete the training.
elil17 4y ago
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

digdugdirk 4y ago

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.

dymk 4y ago
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.
Firmwarrior 4y ago
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

nickpeterson 4y ago

I thought this said augmented reality ‘wedding’ service and began wondering how that would work out…

Oktokolo 4y ago

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.

reportingsjr 4y ago
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/mannglas.htm http://wearcam.org/mannventions-password-stefanosmannaz13/ma...
- originalcopying 4y ago
  edit: deleted
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    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.
    - 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

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 4y ago
It does provide real time feedback, apparently. The product video shows this and scoring capabilities in the software.
- giantg2 4y ago
  But for a make believe weld, not a real one.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Sure but if the system can get your arc length, work angle, travel angle and travel speed dialed and consistent before you even plug in a real welder that's a decent increase in the throughput of a vocational facility with a given number of welding stations because now a fraction of the training can be performed in the classroom.
    - MrOwnPut 4y ago
      It'll never match the muscle memory. Practicing welding isn't that expensive either... After the safety courses you're never in the classroom. You should always be behind the stick with an instructor. It really only takes a summer in the barn to learn how to weld. Just put in 100 hours or so and you're good. 10000 and you're a pro, just like any trade, including programming.
      - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
        It doesn't need to match muscle memory. It needs to lop off the first 10-20hr of actual welding where the instructor runs from booth to booth telling people to correct their arc length, angles and speed thereby increasing the efficiency by which welders can be trained.

dieselgate 4y ago

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

contingencies 4y ago

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 4y ago
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
- contingencies 4y ago
  Awesome, please send me an email. As well as fab, we do a lot of embedded, too.
nullc 4y ago
Doesn't that really only apply to mass production, a LOT of welding is one-off (or few-off) work used to connect parts (which may have been mass produced). If you mean to actually weld one off parts-- is the sensing technology in place to accomplish that? The speed and feed you go at depends on the ambient conditions and part geometry. Even if so, you have the problem that much welding is and must be done in-situ because the assembly is not transportable. In some cases you could bring in a robot arm, but even where you can that seems like lot of effort vs just sending a welder in.

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

thenobsta 4y ago

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 4y ago

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.

thebeardisred 4y ago

It strikes me that no one pointed out to their product managers the liability (kernel sources, packages, updates, et al) that is shipping an ~~Android~~ mobile device as a part of their product.

rpmisms 4y ago

Welding is very physical, this simply won't work. In stick welding (the only kind I can do), if you don't pay attention to the feel of the rod, you'll get stuck. This is playing a welding video game. That could be useful for certain extremely limited circumstances, but this is not it.

bagels 4y ago

I wish it would simulate the heavy cabling/tubing that is attached to the welder. Can have someone simulate that by randomly tugging on the back of the welder to simulate the cable getting caught on things.

nayuki 4y ago

I got to play with this welding simulator at a Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) open house last year. Seemed cool.

daviddever23box 4y ago

There is nothing like the smell of hot, ground metal to remind you of the heights of career achievement possible in the industrial Midwest of America. A simulator will never give you that holes-burnt-into-your-shirt feeling. If you can weld, and you can code, the world is your **ing oyster. One of the two will pay your bills.