Terminal unit for resistance welding or laser beam processing, control apparatus for resistance welding or laser beam processing, and method for operating terminal unit

Abstract

A single terminal unit is provided to automatically adapt to various types of control apparatus for controlling resistance welding or laser beam processing by merely connecting the terminal unit to the control apparatus via a communication interface. In an initialization mode, a CPU in the programing unit verifies a machine ID registered therein with the machine ID of the control apparatus currently connected to the programming unit via the communication interface (C1-C8). If not matched, the CPU requests the control apparatus to send an application program (C4). In response to the request, a CPU in the control apparatus reads, from ROM, the stored application program and transmits (downloads) it to the CPU in the programming unit. The CPU in the programming unit receives the application program from the control apparatus and writes it into a program read/write memory (C5). It also writes the machine ID of the control apparatus, as newly registered machine ID, into the memory at a predetermined location. Thereafter, the CPU in the programming unit operates according to the application program downloaded in the program read/write memory.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.