The Austrian family-owned company Fronius, which has grown over the past three quarters of a century from a regional repair shop to a global player in the fields of welding technology, photovoltaics and battery charging technology, has completed 75 years of business
Günter Fronius started a radio and electrical repair workshop in 1945, beginning a story of success that continues to this day under the stewardship of the third generation of the founding family. The business was born in the market town of Pettenbach, Upper Austria, where Fronius’s headquarters are still located.
The welding revolution
In 1950, Günter Fronius expanded the company’s product range to include welding transformers. Building on this technological basis, over the following decades Fronius grew into a substantial medium-sized company. His children, Brigitte Strauss and Klaus Fronius, launched a programme of growth and international expansion that led to the founding of subsidiaries all over the world. In 1992, it was also decided to focus on solar energy as a “technology of the future.”
Perfect Welding
The Business Unit Perfect Welding has been in existence since 1950, when Günter Fronius discovered that he could melt a rod electrode with the technology used in the battery chargers. Research made great progress in the mid-1970s, culminating in the Fronius Transarc 500. This was the world’s first transistor-based primary switched inverter welding system, and Fronius suddenly gained major partners outside Austria.
In 1998, the Transarc was replaced by the digital TransPuls Synergic (TPS), the first welding system capable of being updated. At the time, the company was also researching a new type of welding process, which became known as “cold metal transfer” (CMT). Since then, it has been possible to join extremely thin materials, as well as materials such as aluminum and steel. Today, Fronius is setting a new trend with TPS/i (Trans Process Solution / intelligent revolution). This high-performance welding computer is the company’s answer to Industry 4.0 and comes into its own when used in conjunction with the data management system provided by the WeldCube Premium software solution.
Perfect Charging
Günter Fronius started charging lead accumulator batteries in the early years of the business, and in the early 1990s the company switched from 50Hz chargers to high-frequency technology for the first time. Further research lead to the Ri charging process, which charges the battery according to its effective inner resistance.
Since then, Fronius products have automatically adapted themselves to the batteries being charged and their properties, making every charge unique. Perfect Charging is currently taking the next step into the future with lithium-ion technology, incorporating new ideas about digitalisation and device networking.
Solar Energy
The product range extends from tailor-made storage solutions to photovoltaics for water heating and solar e-mobility, hydrogen production and storage, and H2 refuelling infrastructure. The Fronius portfolio will soon be extended to include the Symo GEN24 Plus three-phase hybrid inverter, an all-in-one solution for comprehensive solar self-sufficiency.
