The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated herein and form part of the specification, help illustrate various embodiments of the present invention. In the drawings, like reference numbers indicate identical or functionally similar elements.
As illustrated in
Referring to
Next (step 204), protection system 108 determines whether it should restart power system 102 or enter a non-operating protective mode. If the latter, then process 200 may end, otherwise process 200 may proceed to step 206.
In step 206, protection system 108 determines a length of time that it should wait before attempting to restart power system 102 (i.e., a “disable interval”). In step 208, after waiting the determined disable interval (e.g., a 0.1 second interval, a 0.5 second interval, a 1 second interval, a 2 second interval, etc), protection system 108 restarts power system 102 (e.g., causes power system 102 to resume providing power to work coil 104 or other RF field generator). After step 208, process 200 may return to step 202.
Referring to step 204, in determining whether to restart power system or enter the non-operating protective mode, protection system 108 may consider one or more of the following factors: (1) the temperature sensed by one or more of sensors 131-133, (2) the number of threat conditions that have occurred with the last X amount of time (e.g., the last 5 minutes) (X can be configurable) (this information can be determined from the reset history log) or since the occurrence of a certain event, (3) the specific threat condition that was sensed, (4) the operating frequency of the power system, (5) the magnitude of overload experienced by switching devices within the power system, etc.
Similarly, referring to step 206, in determining the disable interval, protection system 108 may consider one or more of the same factors listed immediately above.
As an example, in step 206, protection system 108 may determine the length of the waiting period based, at least in part, on a determination of the number of threat conditions that have occurred within the last X amount of time (X can be some predetermined period) or the number of threat conditions that have occurred since some predetermined event (e.g., the number of threat conditions that have occurred since initialization of power system 102). As a more specific example, upon detecting the first threat condition since initialization of power system 102, protection system may select a disable interval of 0.1 seconds, and upon detecting the second threat condition since initialization of power system 102, protection system may select a disable interval of 0.3 seconds. The disable interval may continue to increase for each subsequently detected threat condition. After detecting some number of threat conditions since initialization, protection system 108 may determine to enter the non-operating protective mode. As another specific example, in some embodiments, the disable interval is initially selected to be 0.1 seconds and is not increased unless 3 or more threat conditions occur within a period of 30 seconds.
While various embodiments/variations of the present invention have been described above, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not limitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present invention should not be limited by any of the above-described exemplary embodiments, but should be defined only in accordance with the following claims and their equivalents.
Additionally, while the process described above and illustrated in the drawings is shown as a sequence of steps, this was done solely for the sake of illustration. Accordingly, it is contemplated that some steps may be added, some steps may be omitted, the order of the steps may be re-arranged, and some steps may be performed simultaneously.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60840047 | Aug 2006 | US |