polar plot

[Wes_Ramm1]

Has anyone implemented a polar plot for use in a dynamic balancing application (rotating machinery)?

If so, it would save me some time on a compressed schedule program. 

Wes

[MarkBlack]

Does you application require any particular hardware?  I am sure there are some example inverted pendulum programs for FPGA.

[RavensFan]

I have not used polar plots myself to be able to help much.  But look under the graphs palette on the front panel.  Go down into controls, you'll see some indicators for a few different polar plots.  You can open up several different layers of subVI's to see how these work.  It looks like they use numerous subVI's to draw polar plots in a picture control.

[preston_johnson]

Good Morning,

The Sound and Vibration Measurement Suite has polar plots (for 1st order magnitude and phase) as well as orbit plots for tracking out of balance and hot spot location.  These tools are commonly used in balancing applications for rotating machinery. 

See the following for more info:

[broken links removed 2/3/26; pages no longer available]

You may also want to review the code at [broken link removed 2/3/26; page no longer available] which is a balancing application for LabVIEW PDA leveraging simpler graphics. 

Let us know what you think of these tools to assist in your rotating machinery balancing application. 

Preston

[Wes_Ramm1]

Preston,

We own the S&V toolkit, and I am aware of the features that you are talking about.  However, in industrial machine balancing, it is common to see a plot that looks like the one on the following referenced page:

http://www.balancemaster.com/Instrumentation.htm

This plot shows the location of mass eccentricities as points, rather than vectors, and shows some acceptable vibe limts as an annular feature.  There are, of course, variations on this theme, but as far as I can tell, none of the NI supplied tools will create this graphic 'out of the box'  That's completely OK, and this post was an attempt to find someone who might have adapted the NI tools for this particular use that I could 'steal' and save myself some time.

Wes

[preston_johnson]

try contacting www.vibdaq.com, they had done some balancing in the past.  While their product does not yet have balancing on their datasheet, they may have some LabVIEW VIs or might propose something. 

I'll also provide feedback to our Sound and Vibration software development team to see if there is something we can do for you. 

Preston

[Buck_Smith]

Wes,

Are you balancing in one plane only?

[RavensFan]

I would still consider using those Polar Plot VI's.  As you drill down through them, you see there are numerous subVI's that break a tremendous amount of picture drawing work into smaller pieces.  I think you can base your code on some of those smaller pieces.  All you would have do do is come up with one more subVI that would draw a small circle in the correct part of the picture.

[QiaoGuo]

Hi, Wes

The polar plot in LabVIEW and SVMS is a generic one for all user cases. I saw the "Polar-Graphic" plot in www.balancemaster.com, it is really cool, but it is specifically designed for balancing.

I think you can build a polar plot XControl for your balancing use cases too, based on the LabVIEW generic one.

The current polar plot in LabVIEW and SVMS connects every two continuous elements, and you can not set the properties of the plot, thus there will be some problems when the input is a single element of magnitude and phase.

If you can tell me exactly the features you want for your balancing polar plot (such as the different color annular zones, etc), maybe I can help you to implement a prototype.

Qiao

[Wes_Ramm1]

Thanks everyone for your help.  I am pretty much convinced that I will have to do this myself, and that's OK, but like everyone else, I am always looking for shortcuts.  The Built in Polar stuff is an excellent starting point, so that is good news.

Wes