California-based Amada Miyachi America — a leading manufacturer of resistance welding, laser welding, marking, cutting, and micro-machining equipment and systems — has launched the new MM-400A desk-top resistance weld checker (www.amadamiyachi.com).

Operators can now easily monitor and manage key welding variables that result in changes in weld heat, including current, voltage, time, force and displacement.

The compact unit supports AC, DC inverter, AC inverter, transistor and capacitive discharge resistance welding technologies.

The MM-400A is suitable for use in process development, where it can be used to correlate waveform and numeric data with process results and provide detailed weld data for process optimisation and validation.

In a production environment, it reduces scrap by detecting drifts in the weld process and alerting operators before the process fails.

It also reduces the frequency of destructive testing and provides an independent way of monitoring the welding power supply.

The MM-400A features a simple and intuitive user interface and a colour touch-panel display. An envelope function allows the operator to set upper and lower segmented or continuous limits around the entire waveform.

The unique seam-welding mode monitors AC current and voltage or DC voltage for up to 5min.

The unit provides ISO17657-compliant measurement for current (when used with available ISO-compliant toroidal coil) and offers Ethernet (TCP/IP), and RS-232/485 communication.

Pre-weld displacement measures the workpiece thickness. Multi-language support includes English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German and French.

The accessories available include shunt resistor force sensors, a built-in force sensor, displacement sensors, and weld through sensors that offer simultaneous measurement of the applied force.