Printer Port Digital I/O for use with Stepper Pulse / Direction

[Cam280]

HI

I would like to learn more about the use of the parallel port in Labview 7.1

I have seen many cnc applications were the parallel port is used to send out digital pulses to control the speed and direction of stepper motors (upto 4 axis) 8 outputs

As well as inputs for items like limit switches etc

I have an application where I need to control several steppers (step and direction)

I am already using 2 M-Series cards in the PC, The ctl 0 and 1 on both cards are already being used on other stepper drives (this works great by the way)

I need to add 3 more steppers to my system and I wanted to use the parallel port to do this

Are there any examples of such high speed digital I/O Typically upto speeds of 25kHz

FYI The CNC software / printer port control can be found at

http://www.artsoftcontrols.com/artsoft/index/index.htm

Thanks in advance

Michael

[Ana P]

Hi Michael,

I found several links that could be helpful in using the parallel port in LabVIEW:

- Using VISA to Access the Parallel Port in LabVIEW

You can also find an example at National Instruments\LabVIEW\examples\portaccess\parallel port examples.llb. However, I understand that the actual timing of the parallel communication will depend on the operating system. I think it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve the 25 kHz rate with this vis, but it might worth having a look at them. I see that you are already using two M series cards, but we also offer counter/timer cards that could be a better fit for this application. At this point, I would suggest using the PCI-6602 that has 8 counters. I hope this is helpful,