ACH550 brake chopper activation

Hi all,
I am new to this forum and am looking for someone familiar with the electronics of the ABB ACH550-024A-2 product. I have purchased one of these units to run a table saw, specifically to convert single to three phase. I want to enable the internal brake chopper which is disabled on this model. The ACS550 has the chopper enabled. The ACH has the exact same part number power and logic boards as the ACS and I have physically confirmed that the hardware exists. I suspect that when one orders the logic board, it is either flashed for ASH or ASC. Since my application is so simple, all I really want is to activate the internal chopper. The control difference appears to be that the ACH has no access to the 2005 command whereas the ACS does access this command.

My questions:
Is there hidden access to any, specifically, the 2005 command on the ACH550?
Is it possible to reflash the logic board to an ACS model?
Short of a SW solution, is there a HW mod one can make to enable the internal chopper?

Thanks in advance for any assistance anyone can offer!!

You are undoubtedly correct, the HVAC version has different software. You should have selected the general purpose version to get the brake resistor option. Not a feature generally available on HVAC drives.

Re-flashing is the only way to change that. There is a decent chance that it is in fact "possible"...the thing was programmed to begin with, and likely is not that hard, IF you have the code and the procedure.

As to getting the code and procedure, I have no idea, but I suspect that is not happening. It HAS happened, we were able to do a re-flash on a different brand (Eaton, made by Vacon), but the most usual case is that the price is different, and it amounts to a free upgrade, which they do not do.

Code is what operates the thing, nearly zero chance of any H/W modification that will be effective in operating the brake chopper.

There ARE external devices to do that, but they tend to be quite expensive. I forget the names of the two types we used. Maybe I will remember, and if so I'll post them, but don't get excited. You also then need access to the DC bus, which I did not examine the manual to check. It's a big manual, and not laid out as nicely as many others.

Ah.. Bonitron was one of them. There are others, some may be a lot cheaper.

Bonitron Solutions for AC Drives

The ACH is intended for HVAC fans and pumps so it does not have a Braking Transistor, that's why you cannot get to the parameter for it. It's also rated for Variable Torque loads, so the firmware will not allow it to use the full overload capability of the transistors; you wil be limited to 110% for 30 sec. rather than 150% for 60 sec. If you have doubled the size of the drive to accommodate the single phase input, that may not be a problem though. But you still don't have the Braking Transistor.

An external brake module like the Bonitron is your only option now.

I appreciate everyone's help with this so understand that I am not trying to be rude by saying that it is an incorrect yet widely held belief that the ACH550 does not contain the brake chopper hardware. This includes and likley promulgated by ABB representatives, who told me in no uncertain terms that the brake chopper hardware/transistor was not in the ACH version. Digging deeper revealed that the part number of both the power and logic boards of the ACH were exactly the same as the ACS model of the same power level. I went a step further and looked up the part number of the IGBT module in the ACH550 (my physical unit). It does indeed contain the braking IGBT and diode as well as all the traceable driver circuitry, connectors, wiring etc.. Since the logic boards are also the same part number but need to be ordered specified to which version it is for, I can only surmise that the only hardware difference between the same power level ACH and ASC model is possibly some power board jumper or switch (if anything) and the that logic board ACH/ACS difference is simply a flash. That information helps little as I do not have the software or interface knowledge to re-flash it myself. My hope was that someone knew of a hidden command path to address the 2005 parameter directly and engage the hardware (which DOES exist!!). But that is not looking very promising…