Dual Stepper Motor Controllers on a CAN Bus

Hello All,
I hope this is the right forum for this message. If not, please let me know where I should post it.
Friends of mine are working on a project involving controlling many dual-stepper motor assemblies, using LabVIEW as the main control code running in the control hub computer. The stepper assemblies will be located remotely, up to several hundred feet away from the control hub. I suggested that they consider using a CAN bus for communications, and they seem interested.
Can any of you recommend drop-in stepper motor controllers for this application that will integrate easily with LabVIEW and NI-CAN?
Is CAN the right com bus for this application? If not, what would you suggest? What else should my friends be considering?
Many thanks in advance for any suggestions you can provide.
Sincerely,
Forbes Black

Just post a link to the new forum post so that anyone that wants to answer will be directed to the correct one. You can not remove it yourself. Have a great day.
Alex D
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Similar Messages

Suitable card for three stepper motors

Hello everyone,
I want to ask which DAQ card would be suitable for controlling three (X,Y,Z stage) stepper motors using continuous and/or finite pulse generation. X and Y stages have to be independent on each other (i.e. diagonal movement), Z one does not but it would be nice. Solution may include buying two cards to ensure the independency of counters.
I have heard that for finite pulse generation two counters are used for one axis (stage). Does it mean I need a card with six counters? Or two cards with four and two counters? In that case, our lab is equipped with the old 6035E card providing two counters (unfortunately not independent in finite pulse generation mode probably due to the statement above), which could handle one of the axes.
I dont want to use DIO for pulse generation because there is no possibility to control the frequency of pulses. Frequency for the stepper motor varies from 1000 to 2000 Hz.

Hi Diego,
There is a way to only use one counter to output a finite digital pulse train.
Normally when performing a finite counter output operation, two counters are required. One counter is used to actually output the pulses and another is used to gate the first counter and therefore output a finite number of pulses.
The way to accomplish this same behavior with a single counter is by setting up a continuous pulse output task with a start trigger and a pause trigger. The pause trigger takes the place of the second counter normally used as the gate signal, freeing this counter to be used for other operations.
Finally, an external source must be used to create a pulse of a desired width in order to achieve a finite pulse train that used a single counter on the PCI-6602. In the case below the external signal is passed to Dev3/PFI0, which has been configured to be the pause trigger source terminal.
Pause triggers are only valid for continuous sampling mode with implicit timing. You can find the properties for the proerpty node in the following locations:
Properties » More » Pause » Trigger Type
Properties » More » Pause » Digital Level » Source
Properties » More » Pause » Digital Level » Pause When
For each property, right-click the terminal and select Create » Control or Create » Constant from the shortcut menu.
Keep in mind also that there are stepper motor controllers available from NI like 7332. For more information check the link above:
http://sine.ni.com/np/app/main/p/sn/n21:6/ap/global
May you have further questions dont hesitate to ask!
Best regards,
David Varga
Applications Engeneer
NIH

Can LabView simulate multiple nodes on a single CAN bus?

We currently are developing a system where a single control panel controls a number of drive motors over a CAN bus. Each of those drive motors has electronics and software in them which tracks the status of the motor, and this information is sent over the CAN bus to the control panel.
We have previously used Vector CANoe to simulate the activity of the drive motor nodes on the CAN bus during development of the control panel. We want to move to LabView in order to run this kind of simulation.
Is it possible for LabView to be used to run this kind of simulation? Each node would have its own CAN ID on the bus. It would need to send out appropriate periodic status messages on that CAN bus that would be based on user inputs. It would also need to display certain information based on commands sent to it via the control panel over CAN.
Thanks for the assistance.

Hi,
I believe that what you need is to simulate several CAN ports. There is a similar discussion form that I believe will answer you question. I hope this helps.
Regards
Krista S.
Applications Engineering
National Instruments

NI Motion Controllers and Drives compatibility with stepper motors

Hello:
I'm trying to setup a motion control system and I'm facing some trouble. The final goal is to be able to control a couple of stepper motors.We already have a PXI System with a PXI-7354 motion controller, and a UMI-7774 connector block. What we don't have yet is the stepper drives and motors. It's likely that because of torque requirements we may need a gearbox. Here I disclose some of my doubts:
We are considering the P70360 or the P70530 drives, but I would like to know if it is possible to connect thrid party drives to the motion controllers? What requirements this drives should comply?
Similar as the first one, Is it possible to connect third party stepper motors to the NI stepper drives? What requirements this motors should comply?
Finally, Is it possible to adapt gearboxes to the NI stepper motors? If so, Which ones are recommended?
Thanks in advance,
Robst.
Robst - CLD
Using LabVIEW since version 7.0

Hello Robst,
Either the P70360 or the P70530 will be good drives depending on your wattage requirement. A loose rule regarding wattage is not to exceed 80% of capacity. If you think you'll exceed that, buy bigger.
Regarding third party drives, though many are compatible we cannot guarantee compatiblitty of all drives nor are we able to support them. That being said you may want to take a look at these KBs which describe some issues to be mindful of when looking at third party drives.
How Do I get the 73xx Controller and UMI-7764 to Drive a Third Party Stepper Motor?
How to Connect NI 73xx Digital Outputs to Third Party Equipment
How to connect the 73xx inhibit and command signal outputs to third party drives.
Some points to glean from the above links are what kind of current gets sinked and sourced by the drives to insure compatibility. Regarding stepper motors, again we will only be able to guarantee compatiblity and provide support for stepper motors provided by NI. That said, the majority of stepper motors I've seen are compatible with our equipment assuming the drive it's connected to is compatible. Below are some articles that may help you make a decision on what type of stepper motor you choose.
Selecting the Proper Size Stepper Motor
NI Stepper Motion System Selection Guide
How Can I Determine My Stepper Motor Wiring Without the Stepper Motor Pinout?
As for gearboxes, you will just need to make sure that the gearbox you select fits properly with the motor you are using. Often the gearboxes are standardized to NEMA sizes that correspond with the stepper motors. Kollmorgen, who manufactures the motors that we sell, also makes gearboxes. Their gearboxes would be a good place to start.
Regards,
Daniel H.
Customer Education Product Support Engineer
National Instruments
Certified LabVIEW Developer

How can I send commands to a stepper motor to move in steps?

How can I controll a stepper motor by using labview.7?
what do I need?

This will depend on what hardware you are using to send the commands to the stepper motor. NI offers motion controllers and drives that come with all the functions you will need to operate the motors. Depending on the size and number of motors, you will have different hardware requirements. Take a look at the motion products available here: http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/nioc.vp?cid=1506〈=US
If you have more questions, you can always contact NI at www.ni.com/contact to help spec out the system.
If you are using third party products, you will have to call their dll from LabVIEW using a Call Library Node function. This gives you access to all the functions in a dll.
Hope this helps.
Regards-
Julie S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

How can i control a 3rd party stepper motor driver

I want to control a 3rd party stepper motor hardware driver througt labview.The company has given me a C program.Can somebody help.I'm new to labview.
Thanks in advance
Rajan

Hi Rajan,
The LabVIEW may be able to control the motor depends on the bus used for communication and what the C program does.
For example, if you connect to the motor using a simple bus, such as RS-232 (serial), then you could use LabVIEW to send the commands to the instrument. For this you need the motor's command set, which should be in the motor's documentation. You can also look into the C example program you were giving and determine if commands are being sent directly using the serial port.
Another way the manufacturer might provide conectivity is using a driver. In this case, the manufacturer provides you with a library of functions that reflect the functionality of the device. You don't need to worry about the specifics of the communication bu
s. You just call the functions from this library. In this case, you can use LabVIEW's Library Function Call Node, which allows you to call C functions in dlls.
If you can include more information on how the motor is connected to the instrument and what the C code does, I could probably provide more details.
DiegoF
National Instruments.

How can I output a square wave to control a stepper motor using 7332 controller?

I have the following system configuration for testing a linear actuator (LA):
LabView 7.1
NI FlexMotion 7332 Motion Controller
NI Flex DMM 4070
The LA is a stepper motor with Step and Direction of Rotation inputs, as well as some discrete I/O for Power Enable and other functions.
The LA specification only requires that I send a 50% Duty Cycle square wave signal with frequency less than 300 Hz to it in order to make it step. The LA has it's own power source. I only need the 7332 to generate the drive signal and the DOR signal to the LA. Using some of the example VI's, I can get the LA to work, but I will need to incorporate the functions in to a custom application.
How can I weed through the numerous advanced functions the 7332 offers and only generate a DOR signal and a step command at a user-defined frequency. How do I set up the controller for this?
Thanks

Hello,
All the VIs that you can use to create a pulse train and digital I/O from your motion controller are found in the "Analog & Digital I/O VIs" sub-palette in the "Flex Motion" palette. Use "Load PWM Duty Cycle" and "Configure PWM Output" VIs to create the square wave. Use the "Set I/O Port Direction", "Set I/O Port MOMO", and "Set I/O Port Polarity" VIs to create digital output. I hope you find this information useful. You can learn about the specifics of these VIs and their inputs/outputs in the NI-Motion VI Help.
Regards,
Aaron B.
National Instruments

How can i control the motor movement of stepper motor using a NI PXI 7330

Good day to all,
i'm a newbie in programming in motion control of NI. I just want to ask if how can i control the clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation of a stepper motor using NI PXI 7330 module. all i can do is the counter-clockwise rotation using the example vi (Simple one-axis move.vi) found in the examples of LabView 2009.
Thanks

what type of limit switch sensor are you using and how did you wire itß What are your MAX settings regarding the limit switches?
Good day SIr Jochen,
I am using two reed switch for the reverse and forward limit. I wired the signal wire of the reed switch to the limit ports(forward and reverse Limit) and its ground to the digital ground of the UMI-7764.
the attachment below is the my max configuration about limit switches
Attachments:
max configuration.JPG ‏155 KB

I want to run a stepper motor using FPGA card 7851r with 9474 driver C rio 9151 is it possible or can i do in LABVIEW CVI

Hello i want to run Stepper with 7851 R FPGA card with 9474 driver of crio chasis but i am not able to understand how to proceed .Or can opt this option by using lab view CVI
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi SHV,
actually I don't know in which context you want to use your existing hardware for your stepper motor.
1. The hardware, which you describe, is/was used for which application? ( data acquisition, controlling a system, etc)?
2. Did you buy the hardware especially for the motor application?
3. You don't know how which signals are required for your stepper motor.
Here are some basics from NI about motor control
Fundamentals of Motion Control
http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3367/en
NI Motion Control Technical Library
http://www.ni.com/white-paper/3054/en
4. Why do you get the idea the digital output module 9474 is suitable for the stepper motor?
I would recommend to talk directly to the customer support, so we can figure out in detail your aims about
the application. Contact your local NI office or request
a service request on following website:
Service Request Manager
https://sine.ni.com/srm/app/login/p/tab/getassistance
Kind regards,
RupiDo

Can I control a stepper motor by a time varying velocity input?

I want to control the motion of the stepper motor by a velocity input that looks something like a Sine wave.The velocity is changing as a function of time. Can I change the velocity of the motor at a prescribed time interval?
Thanks in advance
Kevin

Thanks for getting back to me on this. The controller card that I have is the PCI-7342 controller card. The time of a cycle is about seven minutes. I want to ramp the RPM of the motor from zero up to a max value then return it to zero and then go in the opposite direction . A graph of the RPM vs Time is attached.
I thought that I could input an array of velocities into a Load RPM VI and specify the time for each input.I have not been able to do this as of yet, because the load RPM VI will not take an array input.
All these inputs would be made in labview so they are inputs for the controller card. I was under the impression that the controller card generates the steps and direction from the data entered in labview and sends the step and direction impulses to the driver. Do I have the method of operation right?
Do you think this is possible?
Thanks again

Can I get a stepper motor to work useing an AO channel on a DAQ card?

Can I get a stepper motor to work useing an AO channel on a DAQ card? I know its a very low currentl coming out, but what Im going to be using the motor for is very weak. Has anyone tried this before? I certinaly dont want to spend 2,000+ on somthing that will be basicly moving a string on some pullys back and forth.
Thanks,
-Mark

Greetings, Mark
You can certainly use the A0 as a driving signal, but you need to amplify the current considerably to run a stepper motor. Additionally, most stepper motors require multiple phase driving signals to work properly. If I understand your application, I believe a stepper motor is a bit of overkill...you only want to use them when precise positioning and repeatability is an issue. You might look at some of the linear actuators available.
Eric
Eric P. Nichols
P.O. Box 56235
North Pole, AK 99705

How can I change the speed of a stepper motor?

HSI bipolar Linear Actuator Size14, HSI Chopper Driver 40105, NI PCI-6052E, NI SC-2345, 2 SCC-DO01 modules, and SCC-FT01
The motor works at one speed with a boolean array input, using the SCC-DO01. But I need to be able to change the speed of the motor. Specifically it needs to operate on several frequencies of functions of as displacement vs. time, such as sine wave, triangle wave, and square wave. I tried to find information about using a digital pulse train but had no luck. Is it even possible to accomplish with this hardware?
Message Edited by Draben on 01-22-2006 09:43 PM

In general E-Series DAQ-boards like the PCI-6052E are not very good for motion control tasks. The 6052E doesn't provide hardware timed digital I/Os so you can control the digital lines only by software. This is both slow and inaccurate as long as you are running the board under a non-deterministic OS like Windows.
On a real-time OS the jitter would be better but still the frequency would be low and it would still be hard to program accurate acceleration and deceleration ramps.
If you use the counter/timer instead of the digital I/Os you could reach higher velocities and a much better timing accuracy but it would be even harder to program acceleration/deceleration ramps which you will need if you want to reach higher velocities with your stepper motor. Additionally for motion control applications you may want features like limit switch monitoring and following error tracking which require again real-time capabilities.
With this said I don't recommend the usage of a multifunction DAQ board as a motion control board. Please have a look at the NI motion control boards like the PCI-7332 which does all the motion I/O and trajectory control onboard.
Best regards,
Jochen Klier
National Instruments Germany

How can I control 3 stepper motors w/ amplifier by sending TTL pulses from DIO96

We have NI PCI-DIO-96 board and we have 3 stepper motors with amplifier and encoders. We want to control the motors by sending TTL pulses directly from the DIO-96 board to the amplifiers. Is this possible? What would you recommend if this is not a good approach? Thanks in advance.
Roman Zeylikovich

Roman,
Thank you for contacting National Instruments. While using a motion controller would be the recommended approach for any type of motion application, you may be able to use your DIO board to generate a TTL pulse train to control the step and direction inputs of your drive and motor. You will need to make sure that the current sinking and sourcing specification for the DIO-96 fits your stepper motor. That board is not designed to source very much current at all so this is one issue you will need to verify. Also, this board does not have any counter/timer logic that can handle quadrature encoder inputs.
Again, this digital device is probably not the best solution to control a stepper motor, but, depending on your hardware, could be configured to work proper
ly. The PCI-7334 is a low-cost stepper motion controller that can control up to 4 axes and is designed to easily accommodate these types of applications. You can browse through more information on our Motion controller boards at the following website:
http://sine.ni.com/apps/we/nioc.vp?cid=3809〈=US
Let us know if you have any more questions or comments.
Regards,
Michael
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

How can I control 3 stepper motor in same time?

I want to control 3 stepper motor and 30 electro-valves.
I only had a few lessons on how to control one in C in college.
Now I need to do this in labview and using an board from NI
How can do the control of the three motors in same time?
What the best board to do this. Maybe the NI PCI 6034.
But I will need more than one?

At least some of the NI motor controller boards have up to 32 digital lines which can be set to input or output. I did not write the software for our systems but we are using quite a few of the digital lines for our systems and have no problems reading the digital inputs or setting the digital outputs. Also, the digital outputs offer a high current sink capability and usually can be used to drive external drives without any interface circuits.
The digital lines are available on a separate connector of the NI boards and there are also break-out boxes (with screw terminals) available. I do not see any serious problems to do your control tasks just with one NI motion controller board, as long as you do not have any special requirements (high sampling speed, high frequency pulse output etc) for the digital lines.

How can I control a stepper motor drive using a DAQ card?

I need to control a simple CW/CCW stepper motor drive using a DAQ
card. I simply need to output a 5 volt signal and then a drop in
the signal, and so on 200 times or steps for 1 revolution. I have
desiigned the basic program, but do not know how to output the
appropriate signal.
Cheers,
Matt

What DAQ card do you have? Ideally, one with a counter output to generate the steps, where you can control frequency. If you try to start the motor too fast (acceleration or abrupt application of fast pulses) it may stall out. Search in Help/Search for Examples for 'frequency' and 'pulse' for example of frequency generation. You can also use a digital output on the DAQ card to control direction.
If DAQ card does not have a counter, you coul do a software timed loop to toggle a digital output to generate the pulse train. It may not be fast enough nor accurate for your application, do not know from info you have given
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It’s the questions that drive us.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dual Stepper Motor Controllers on a CAN Bus

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for