NI Motion - Smoothly moving motor through defined positions

[bobbobobo]

I am using a steeper motor to adjust the angle of a continuously variable neutral density filter for a optics project. By adjusting the angle of the filter, the transmission is varied. The aim is to control the transmission to match a set of reference data e.g. at t=1s, angle = 60 and at t=2s, angle =70 etc.

However, I'm stuck for ways to do this using NI-Motion and LabVIEW. I've tried using the Single-Axis Motion VI and setting the time delay between movements down to 0 but this is still jerky as it involves accelerating/decelerating between every data point (even when using a very high sampling rate). To me, it seems like the type of control I want to replicate must be a common problem, possibly using some form of curve fitting/interpolation?

Does anybody have any suggestions or suitable VIs to achieve a smooth motion through the data points? 

Using:

NI ST23-6 motor

NI 7612 stepper controller

NI 7332 PXI

NI 7772 UMI

[TomTr]

Hi bobbobobo,

From your description of your program, I think some of the Motion examples should be able to point you in the right direction with this. 

If you open up the NI Example Finder, from within LabVIEW if you click Help>>Find Examples, and Search for Motion you will be able to find many different uses of motion. One of them is Sequence of Blended One-Axis Moves.vi. Have you had a look at this?

I believe that this is the sort of functionality you are looking for.

Kind regards,

Tom