Patent ID: 8692157

Claim:
A welding system for performing a welding operation, said welding system comprising: a plurality of welding system components including a power source operative to provide a welding signal to a welding process; and a reprogrammable sequence controller receiving one or more sequence controller inputs from at least one welding system component and providing one or more sequence controller outputs to at least one welding system component, said sequence controller comprising: a processing component, a sequence control program accessible by said processing component, and a sequence control state table file accessible by said processing component, said sequence control state table file including a plurality of sequence control state table file entries, each of said sequence control state table file entries corresponding to a welding operation state and comprising: an instruction identifier that identifies an executable instruction or routine of said sequence control program, an instruction parameter corresponding to the executable instruction or routine identified by said instruction identifier, an exit condition identifier corresponding to a welding system condition, and a next state identifier indicating a next sequence control state table file entry corresponding to said exit condition identifier, wherein said processing component executes said sequence control program according to said sequence controller inputs and according to said sequence control state table file to provide said sequence controller outputs to perform a welding operation by said welding process.