The visualization system employs a computer screen for displaying the rendered visual information from the eye view camera over the flat workpiece — Fig. 5. If the workpiece is a
3D-shaped object (e.g., pipe), the visualization system employs a mockup pipe with the same dimensions as an actual pipe and projects rendered video on its surface. The 3D scanning
system consists of a high-resolution camera and projector. By utilizing the structured light scan algorithm (Ref.41) with subpixel refinement (Ref. 42) for reconstructing the geometry of a
3D object, this system can provide a high accuracy point cloud and mesh of
the mockup.In the authors’ previous paper (Ref.40), virtual welding for a flat workpiece
has been discussed. In this study,a pipe welding application with 3D visualization is examined. Figure 5B shows the virtual welding torch.Figure.6 shows the visualization of the pipe. Both the eye view of the workpiece (Fig. 6A) and virtual view of the mockup (together with the visualized
eye view image) are presented. It will be shown that the proposed system is able to conduct virtual welding experiments whose data will then be recorded and utilized to form a welder
response model.