Measuring electrode stickout resistance during welding

Abstract

A method performed in a welding system that supplies a current and a voltage to a stickout of an electrode from a welding torch during a welding process comprises: sampling the current and the voltage to produce current values and voltage values; computing time derivatives of the current that coincide with the current values; determining first and second current values of the current values that differ from each other but that coincide with first and second time derivatives that match each other; computing a delta current between the first and second current values; computing a delta voltage based on first and second voltage values of the voltage values that correspond to the first and second current values; and computing a ratio of the delta voltage to the delta current to represent a resistance of the stickout.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.