Mr. Bond,
From the way it looks in the
brochure for your Instron 558x, all of the data acquisition and control is built into the hardware. I also noticed that the hardware comes with its own software interface for displaying measurements and utilizing its functionality. If the whole system is integrated, there may be no point to interface with another software program (namely, LabVIEW).
You might try contacting the manufacturer or obtaining a more detailed user manual. Specifically, you are interested in whether the controls and measurements are exposed to the user. For example, there may be a simple connector through which you can control the instrument serially. Or the data acquisition done on the device may be accessible on an output port. Also, I would be quite surprised if the device was GPIB controllable.
Hopefully these can be a few questions to ask the manufacturer to try to use LabVIEW for control and data presentation. Good luck with your application!
Mike D.
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
