Patent ID: 8552665

Claim:
A proactive arc management module in a power supply having a power module providing power to a plasma load through arc management hardware, and a digital power monitor module monitoring the present voltage and current supplied to the plasma load, said proactive arc management module comprising: arc detect module comparing a present voltage supplied to the plasma load to a preset voltage threshold and comparing present current supplied to the plasma load to a preset current threshold and generating an actual arc handling request when comparison of the present voltage or present current to the voltage threshold and current threshold, respectively, indicates an arc is occurring in the plasma load; proactive arc management adjust module responsive to actual arc handling requests from the arc detect module and providing a proactive arc management count as a function of the actual arc handling requests received during a sampling interval; and arc management control module responsive to the proactive arc management count and to actual arc handling requests to control the arc management hardware to execute an arc handling routine for each proactive count and each actual arc so that arcs in the plasma load are reduced to a minimum while the plasma load operates at maximum efficiency.