Highly engineered designs increasingly require the use of improved materials and sophisticated manufacturing techniques. To obtain optimal performance from these engineered products, improved weld properties and joint reliability are a necessarily. This requirement for improved weld performance and reliability has led to the development of high-performance welding systems in which pre-programmed parameters are specified before any welding takes place. These automated systems however lack the ability to compensate for perturbations which arise during the welding process. Hence the need for systems which monitor and control the in-process status of the welding process. This report discusses work carried out on weld penetration indicators and the feasibility of using these indicators for on-line penetration control.