Industrial Engineer · phase 8 of 16 · noun
Control Board
Low-voltage electronics that process commands, feedback, protection, communication, and motor-control algorithms.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- The control board is the drive's brain, the low voltage electronics that read commands and feedback, run the motor control algorithm, handle protection and communications, and drive the gate signals to the IGBTs.
- Example
- The board receives a run command and a speed reference from the terminals, computes the PWM pattern, watches the current sensors, and talks to the keypad and the network card.
- Why it matters
- A drive with a dead power stage and a good control board can often still be programmed and read, and its parameters saved. Firmware, parameters and fault history all live here, which makes it the part to protect from static and from probing with a meter.
- Hook
- The quiet board that tells the loud parts what to do.
Word knowledge
How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.
In a sentence
During commissioning, the technician measures 24 VDC at the Control Board start terminal before enabling the variable frequency drive.
Why these words
- control Anglo-French contrerolle, a duplicate register used for checking acts as the modifier and identifies the board's governing function
- board Old English bord, plank or flat surface supplies the head noun and names the physical assembly
Where it came from
- Origin
- an English compound joining control, from Anglo-French contrerolle, with board, from Old English bord
- Entered the language
- 20th century
- What changed
- Control shifted from checking a duplicate register to governing machinery, while board shifted from a wooden surface to an assembled electrical or electronic unit.
How it is spelled
- Pattern
- The phrase is normally written as an open compound with a space between its two words.
- Pattern
- Both elements retain their independent spellings when combined.
Spelled like
- control panel
- control room
- circuit board
Broken into chunks
-
control
- controller
- controlling
-
board
- switchboard
- motherboard
What it sits beside
Same subject
- gate driver
- terminal block
- PLC backplane
- control panel
Same shape
- control panel
- control circuit
- terminal board
open technical compounds
- control board
- control panel
- terminal block
board compounds
- circuit board
- terminal board
- logic board
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.
