I find it particularly interesting that you were at Trace Bob.
Yes, here is a very quick history...
I started at Trace in 1994 after working in pro and consumer audio and a few years in medical electronics.... Electronics part of those.
Brother Robin started at Trace in 1990 after designing audio gear and then military flight power supply system stuff for several years. Mechanical design part of the electronics mostly.
We were at Trace until and slightly after Xantrex and Trace merged. . XanTrace (as I called them) bought Heart Interface who also had local roots, including people from Trace and were in Kent, in the south Seattle area. So we also had some interaction with them.
Xantrex, the Canadian company took all that over though which forced us to start OutBack Power
After 5 years of OutBack and a falling out with our "partners", Robin started MidNite Solar. I worked at Magnum Energy for 3 and 1/2 years in engineering until OutBack bought my stock and then it was MidNite Solar all the way. The story isn't nearly that straight forward but that's the basics.
All of those companies started with a local high power audio amplifier company called Phase Linear (Bob Carver) in the very early 1970s in Edmonds Washington where most of us worked at least for a while. PL made their own power transformers so that is where that expertise started. Bob Carver was basically the "seed" for MANY different companies around the area... Audio and inverter companies, many of which I either worked at or was associated with. EXCEPT for Dynamote which was another inverter company from the mid 1980s in the Seattle area was eventually sold to another company which continued selling to service vehicle/truck companies like for aid cars, fire engines, etc. It was a popular company for a while and eventually did grid tie. I can't remember the name right now.
Two of the Dynamote engineers came to Trace and one went to Magnum. We were pretty much all friends and worked with each other at various times.
All of these companies manufactured up here in the northwest in Washington until 2010 to 2015 or so. And except for MidNite Solar, all are manufactured either in China, India or Mexico. Exeltech I believe are still made in Texas ? We still do our own SMT and through hole and inductors, etc. The transformers for the newer HF inverters are a bit harder to do economically on a production basis and we may require some overseas help with those.
I have an older video that Robin, I and our dad did of Trace Engineering, including the transformer area you might be interested in seeing.
It is a copy from VHS tape and is a bit faded but you can still see some interesting things.... No sound. Transformers start around 3:50
Generating the mathematically correct drive waveforms for all the ROM lookup tables was pretty challenging too. Software is not something I excel at. Several of the professional software gurus over at The Back Shed individually solved that problem embarrassingly quickly.
For me originally, it was a very long drawn out process indeed.
Its all been a fascinating development project over the years and very gratifying.
Yes, I know ! It is quite a process.
As I remember, Greg (SW engineer) had a pascal program that came up with the different ROM tables for the SW.
It has been a great ride working with all the Seattle area electronics companies. I have learned a lot.
Getting old sucks but I'm not quite ready to stop learning yet !
boB