NI USB-6215 for rotating machinery DAQ

[AnotherLabVIEWguy]

Hello,

I am evaluating LabVIEW and appropriate NI hardware for my application and need help to confirm that I am not missing anything. I have a rotating motor with 5 proximity probes (0 to 9V output), 2 accelerometers (4-20 mA or 0 to 10V output) and 1 speed sensor (pulse encoder output with max RPM of 18000) - Can I connect the outputs of all these instruments to a USB-6215 and develop an application using LabVIEW to display/record data from these instruments ? If yes, will I have to buy a software add-on (like sound and vibration toolkit) to do bode plots, orbit plots, cascade plots and waterfall plots with the data ?

Thanks 

[aputman]

You should probably contact an NI application engineer for help in determining the proper hardware.  There are a lot more requirements that need to be considered other than just the number of inputs (i.e. sampling rates, signal conditioning requirements, etc).  If USB is the route you want to go, I would venture to say that a cDAQ chassis would probably be the better choice since you can mix and match modules.  Of course, this all depends on your budget limitations. 

Don't quote me on this because I've never used it before and I'm not familiar with it at all.  But I think the Sound and Vibration toolkit would be an extremely helpful tool for analyzing/plotting accelerometer data. My company recently considered building a balancing machine with accelerometer outputs and were told it would be a necessary toolkit. 

[AnotherLabVIEWguy]

Hi aputman,

Thanks for the reply and other information! I was hoping for an NI application engineer to answer this since I am to new to NI and don't have the support contract with them. We currently use the USB-6215 daq box with our magnetic bearing controller (MBC) which sends out +/- 5V signals to the DAQ and we have a LabVIEW custom application which displays all the signal data from the MBC - hence the reason of me selecting this same DAQ and also the pricing fits our budget.

[Henrik_Volkers]

I'm curious what accelerometers you are using.

Your 2-20mA or 10V volt spec sounds more like a (CCLD/) IEPE sensor that needs a constant current drive and has a ~10V Bias !   Better check that again!

There are NI DAQ cards that directly support such sensors, otherwise you need a signal conditioner.