A novel low cost magnetron power control for microwave heating applications

Magnetron power supply is an important part of a microwave heating system. Power control of the magnetron´s power supply is desired for microwave heating to enhance performance and to provide system flexibility. The high frequency switching technique in the power supply control is costly and complicated. In another way, pulsing the output power of the magnetron can be simply realized with TRIAC, but in that case the magnetron does not operate continuously. A low cost magnetron power supply with power control for microwave heating is proposed in this work for applications with no critical concerns about the power supply efficiency and weight. The proposed circuit is a simple one with TRIAC. The power control is achieved by controlling the triggering events at appropriate phase angle of the household 220V.