Thermography has proven to be a suitable nondestructive testing method for automatic crack inspection of welds. However automatic weld inspection raises challenges. E.g. the position of the weld might not be exactly as the predefined weld seam, and a weld joint tracking system is needed. To reduce the number of equipment used, a solution is presented in this papers. The infrared camera in the thermography system is a carrier of information of the weld path. This is used for the weld joint tracking system. It is shown that the weld joint tracker is fast enough for an on-line automatic inspection.

Weld joint tracking, Emissivity variation, IR camera, Automatic nondestructive testing