Inverter power supply is known as "tomorrow's power supply", its application in welding equipment has brought revolutionary changes for the development of welding equipment. First of all, compared with the power frequency welding power source, the inverter welding power source can save 20% ～ 30% energy, and the efficiency can reach 80% ～ 90%; Secondly, the inverter welding power source is small in volume and light in weight. The weight of the whole machine is only 1 / 5 ~ 1 / 10 of that of the traditional power frequency rectifier welding power source, and the material consumption is reduced by 80% ~ 90%. In particular, the inverter welding power supply has the advantage of fast dynamic response speed, and its dynamic response speed is 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than that of the traditional power frequency rectifier welding power supply, which is conducive to realize the automation and intelligent control of the welding process. All these indicate that the inverter welding power source has a wide range of application prospects and market potential. At present, more than 50% of the arc welding machines of Panasonic and Osaka transformer companies are inverter welding machines. The main welding machine manufacturers in the United States have produced more than 30% inverter welding machines. The development speed of inverter welding power source in other industrial developed countries is also very fast.

Now, there are four generations of welding inverter power supply in our country: the first generation is the inverter with SCR as the main attack rate device; The second generation is transistor inverter; The third generation is FET inverter; The fourth generation is IGBT inverter, which has high inverter frequency, low saturation voltage, low power consumption, high efficiency and no noise. Compared with the previous three generations, it has more obvious advantages.

The general development trend of inverter power is to develop towards large capacity, lightweight, high efficiency, modularization and intelligence. With the improvement of reliability, performance and application as the core, inverter power is more and more widely used in various arc welding methods, resistance welding, cutting and other processes. High efficiency and high power density (miniaturization) is one of the main goals of arc welding inverter in the world. High frequency and low power consumption of main devices are the main technical approaches to achieve this goal. At present, in Japan, Europe and other countries and regions, about 20kHz arc welding inverter technology has been mature, high quality products and products have been serialized.