Inventory of consumables in electric arc welding process
First Claim
1. A method of maintaining an inventory of consumables in conjunction with performing an electric arc welding process wherein a welding wire is advanced toward a workpiece, a welding arc is established between the advancing wire and the workpiece;
- and the arc is shielded by a protective gas, including the steps of;
a) providing a container of protective gas to be used in the welding process with an electronic device having a memory for storing information pertaining to the available quantity of welding wire in the container;
b) measuring the quantity of wire consumption during the performance of the welding process; and
, c) electronically modifying the memory of the electronic device for the available quantity of wire to reflect said wire consumption.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Information pertaining to characteristics of metal welding electrode wire and which characteristics are useful in connection with adjusting welding parameters in an arc welding process and/or selecting between operating modes in a welding system are encoded on welding wire and/or on other memory components such as bar code labels and tags, RFID cards and tags, IC cards, and Touch Memory buttons, and the memory device is scanned prior to and/or at the point of use of the welding wire for enabling tracking of product distribution, manual and/or automatic selection of an operating mode for the welding system, manual and/or automatic adjustment of welding parameters in a given operating mode, consumables inventory, and the like.
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Citations
10 Claims
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1. A method of maintaining an inventory of consumables in conjunction with performing an electric arc welding process wherein a welding wire is advanced toward a workpiece, a welding arc is established between the advancing wire and the workpiece;
- and the arc is shielded by a protective gas, including the steps of;
a) providing a container of protective gas to be used in the welding process with an electronic device having a memory for storing information pertaining to the available quantity of welding wire in the container;
b) measuring the quantity of wire consumption during the performance of the welding process; and
,c) electronically modifying the memory of the electronic device for the available quantity of wire to reflect said wire consumption. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
d) retrieving the stored information; and
,e) at least one of displaying and printing the retrieved information.
- and the arc is shielded by a protective gas, including the steps of;
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3. The method according to claim 1, wherein said electronic device is one of a RFID component, an IC component, and a semi-conductor memory chip.
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4. The method according to claim 1, wherein said electronic device is a first electronic device, and including the further steps of:
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d) providing a container of protective gas to be used in the welding process with a second electronic device having a memory for storing information pertaining to the available quantity of gas in the container;
e) measuring the quantity of gas consumption during the performance of the welding process; and
,f) electronically modifying the memory of the second electronic device for the available quantity of gas to reflect said gas consumption.
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5. The method according to claim 4, including the further steps of:
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g) retrieving the stored information from said second electronic device; and
,h) at least one of displaying and printing the information retrieved from said second electronic device.
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6. The method according to claim 4, wherein the second electronic device is one of a RFID component, an IC component, and a semi-conductor memory chip.
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7. A method of maintaining an inventory of consumables in conjunction with performing an electric arc welding process wherein a welding wire is advanced toward a workpiece, and a welding arc is established between the advancing wire and the workpiece including the steps of:
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a) providing a container of welding wire to be used in an electric arc welding process with an electronic device having a memory for storing information pertaining to the available quantity of welding wire in the container;
b) measuring the quantity of wire consumption during the performance of the welding process; and
,c) electronically modifying the memory of the electronic device for the available quantity of wire to reflect said wire consumption.
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8. A method of maintaining an inventory of consumables in conjunction with performing an electric arc welding process wherein a welding wire is advanced toward a workpiece, and a welding arc is established between the advancing wire and the workpiece including the steps of:
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a) providing a container of protective gas to be used in the welding process with an electronic device having a memory for storing information pertaining to the available quantity of gas in the container;
b) measuring the quantity of gas consumption during the performance of the welding process; and
,c) electronically modifying the memory of the said electronic device for the available quantity of gas to reflect said gas consumption. - View Dependent Claims (9, 10)
d) retrieving the stored information from said second electronic device; and
,e) at least one of displaying and printing the information retrieved from said electronic device.
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10. The method according to claim 8, wherein said electronic device is one of a RFID component, an IC component, and a semi-conductor memory chip.
Specification