Soft Start Inrush Current Limiter- PCB design

[Muzzer]

Thanks for the feedback, Rod's design produces a much shorter delay, he says the optimum is around 100ms, just 5 cycles. With the 100K variable resistor my version should produce a range of 0-500ms. The combined resistance of the parallel resistor bank is 50 Ohms. This should only protect against initial inrush, and hopefully won't cause much heating of the resistors. It won't do anything about the problem of remanance though. I guess a solution to that might be a switching circuit which is synchronized to the AC? This would involve zero cross detection. I know there are relays out there which have built-in zero cross detection. It still wouldn't solve the polarity though, it could start half a wave out of sync.

Yes, another option might be a means of turning on and off at a defined phase angle, ideally ensuring the appropriate polarity.

A phase angle controller using a triac to gradually open up the duty cycle is the usual method used in industrial soft starts. Both methods are pretty messy / complex, whereas the timer and resistor method is a piece of wind to implement.