Motion Control and Motor Drives

[matthewg]

Hello,

I'd like to control two brushless servo motors using LabVIEW. I've got a PXI7358 controller card and a Copley amplifier. I've read the Getting Started tutorial but otherwise I am new to LabVIEW. I'm looking for a good basic VI and/or a tutorial about how to get started programming the motion of these motors with LabVIEW.

Thanks,

Matthew

[Andy_C.]

Hello Matthew,

Have you had the chance to go through Getting Started NI SoftMotion Controller for Copely Controls CANopen Drives  page.5 to verify that you have all the components?

[Lorne H.]

Matthew,

Bad News: 

NI SoftMotion Controller for Copley Controls CANopen was discontinued a while ago, and, it is not compatible with the PXI-7358.  I hope the first reply didn't cause too much confusion for you.

Good News: 

Using the PXI-7358 with the Copley drive has nothing to do with NI SoftMotion Controller for Copley Controls CANopen.  To connect to PXI-7358 to your Copley drive you will need to...

1.  Interface the PXI-7358 to Copley's +/-10V analog input.

2.  Connect the motor's quadrature encoder to the PXI-7358.

3.  Connect the PXI-7358 "Inhibit Output" to the Copley drive's "Enable" input. 

Furthermore, you will need Copley's CME2 software installed and a serial cable connected to the Copley drive so that you can change the settings on the drive so that the drive knows it will be controlled by an external device.

I recommend that you start by reading...

Getting Started with NI-Motion for NI 73xx Motion Controllers 

and read the Copley drive manual for information on how to configure the drive to use its +/-10V analog to control the torque of the motor.

Good Luck,

Lorne Hengst

Motion Control Product Support Engineer 

[matthewg]

Lorne,

Thank you very much for the clarification. I have connected everything up as you mentioned and read the Getting Started manual.

I'm using a brushless motor, and I see that the Copley amplifier is able to perform the sinusoidal commutation. It looks like the Copley CME2 software can conduct auto phasing of the Hall sensors. But from the PXI-7358 manual, it looks like the PXI-7358 can also perform sinusoidal commutation. Which device then should I set up to perform the sinusoidal commutation?

Thank you,

Matthew

[Andy_C.]

Hello Matthew,

You can do it on either the driver or the controller. If you wish to perform the commutation through the controller, you would need to select Onboard Commutation as opposed to External Commutation, then two of the analog outputs will be used to produce phase-shifted sinusoidal outputs.

[AliT]

Hi, I'm not sure whether this is the right place for asking this question or not and if not, then please guide me to the right place for asking such question. Thanks.

I have a stepper motor with the Vector Network Analyzer Anritsu MS4623B. I got it up and running with the LabWindows/CVI. I need to sync the motion of the stepper motor with my data acquisition. Basically, I have to acquire the data in a way that in the start the motor will come back to home position wherever it was and then I want to move it to the specific position to do the measurements (For Example, I want to measure the 40 GHz channel between 1m to 3m movement of a stepper motor on a linear positioning system (ball-screw)). I've interfaced the VNA with the PC using LabWindows/CVI and I've controlled the clockwise and anti-clockwise movements of the stepper motor using LabWindows/CVI but I'm unable to sync the system in a way that whenever I run the code, the motor will run back to the home position and then move to a specific measurement start position and move till the end position and in between do the increment and stop and acquire the data. Is there any one to help me please? It's really urgent please and I'm doing this thing first time so please guide me in a proper way. I shall really apprecaite that and will be highly obliged with you. Thanks for your time and concern.

Thanks and Regards.