Homing motors and negative positions

[winterfresh11]

Hello all,

I am using two stepper motorized stages (an x axis and y axis) from ThorLabs and am having a problem controlling them with my program after they go to their forward home position. The forwrad position is with the actuators and stages all the way in so it reads 0mm. I have a program in LabView designed to move them both but the problem seems to be that any position with the the actuators and stages extended at all is a negative position. My code uses loops to provide the input to the move absolute method but its inputting a positive number and there is no more room for it to move in a positive direction. Negating the input doesn't seem to work either, I get an error message that say something about the parameter being out of bounds.

Any suggestions would be great!

[inniwhoni]

How are you communicating with the two motorized stages? Are you using NI-Motion or just serial commands? Thanks.

Kevin

Applications Engineer

National Instruments

[winterfresh11]

I guess I'm not 100% sure what you mean so I'll just guess. I'm using a dual channelThorLabs controller, and the motors are using theactivex methods in my code to move. Is this what you meant?

Thanks,

[inniwhoni]

Yes that does answer my question. What kind of signal are you using to control the acuator and does it require excitation, if so what? Thanks.