Gas metal arc welding(GMAW) is regarded as one of the best candidate for welding automation in industrial joining application. It is important to monitor the weld quality for the high performance weld automation. In GMAW, weld quality is closely related to arc stability especially. In this paper, arc light signal is measured and spectrum analyzed to the detect the variation of the weld quality. The FFT of the signal showed that the amplitude variance of FFT power spectrum was very large in poor weld process such as the decrease of weld bead width and height. The results show that it is possible to detect the weld defect position in weld process.