In resistance spot welding process, size of molten nuggest have been utilized to assess the integrity of the weld quality. However real-time monitoring of the nugget size is an extremely difficult problem. This paper describes the design of an artificial neural networks(ANN) estimator to predict the nugget size for on-line use of weld quality monitoring. The main task of the ANN estimator is to realize the mapping characteristics from the sampled dynamic resistance signal to the actual negget size through training. The structure of the ANN estimator including the number of hidden layers and nodes in a layer is determined by an estimation error analysis. A series of welding experiments are performed to assess the performance of the ANN estimator. The results are quite promissing in that real-time estimation of the invisible nugget size can be achieved by analyzing the dynamic resistance signal without any conventional destructive testing of welds.