Industrial Engineer · phase 8 of 16 · noun
Braking Chopper
Electronic switch that connects a braking resistor to the DC bus when bus voltage rises during deceleration.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- The braking chopper is a switch inside or beside the drive that connects a braking resistor across the DC bus when the bus voltage climbs too high. It turns excess energy into heat.
- Example
- A loaded conveyor decelerates quickly and the motor becomes a generator. The bus rises, the chopper fires, and the resistor on top of the cabinet glows instead of the drive tripping.
- Why it matters
- Without a chopper, any fast deceleration of a high inertia load ends in an overvoltage fault. The chopper needs a resistor sized for the energy and the duty cycle, and a resistor that runs too hot is a fire on the cabinet roof.
- Hook
- The place to throw energy the motor is giving back.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
During VFD commissioning, the technician checked the braking chopper rating against the motor's regenerative energy and the resistor duty cycle.
Why these words
- braking Middle English brake, of uncertain origin, plus -ing specifies the action associated with the device
- chopper English chop plus the agent suffix -er names the switching-device class
Where it came from
- Origin
- English engineering compound formed from braking and the power-electronics sense of chopper
- Entered the language
- 1970s
- What changed
- Brake broadened from mechanical stopping to electrical deceleration, while chopper shifted from a cutting agent or tool to a rapidly switched power-electronic circuit.
How it is spelled
- Pattern
- Braking drops the silent e of brake before -ing.
- Pattern
- Chopper doubles the final consonant of chop before -er because chop ends in a stressed short vowel followed by one consonant.
Spelled like
- making
- taking
- shopper
- stopper
Broken into chunks
-
brak(e)
- brake
- braked
- brakes
-
chop
- chop
- chopped
- chopping
-
-er
- switcher
- controller
What it sits beside
Same subject
- braking resistor
- DC bus
- regenerative braking
- variable frequency drive
Same shape
- braking unit
- switching regulator
- clamping circuit
power-electronic converter types
- rectifier
- inverter
- chopper
VFD braking components
- braking chopper
- braking resistor
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 8: VFD Drive Hardware and Power Path
Inside the drive: rectifier, DC bus and inverter, the three stages every variable frequency drive uses to rebuild the waveform a motor sees.
