Stepper motors and labview

I am doing a project that basically has to control a stepper motor using labview. I will have to control this motor and will have to set it to lift a lab jack and to go at different height, these height will have to be calibrated first then entered into memory and called up when the right name is entered. I was just wondering if anybody had any info about how I could go about this and then memory I could use.

Thanking you, PJ

Reply to
PJ McLoughlin
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Tell us about the power amplifier between the I/O board LabVIEW will control and the motor. Will you simply be turning power transistors on and off in a sequence decided in LabVIEW's software? Does it want UP and DOWN pulses on separate inputs? Does it have DIRECTION and STEP inputs? Can you give it a position (step count) command? What do you intend to do about limit switches? There may be more to consider, but that's a start.

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

Dear Jerry,

Thanks a million for taking the time to look at this.

~The Drive board that I will be using is a 4-phase unipolar motor drive up to 2 A/30 V d.c. per phase, and it has an On-board 12 V, 50 mA d.c. output for external use. The control board will have a supply voltage/current 5V regulated d.c. at 1·5A. ~Yes it will basically be turning the power transistor on and off in a certain sequence. ~I will want, up an down pulses on seperate inputs and yes it does have controls for direction and step input. ~In time I will hopefully have a position command using height sensor and this will also take care of limit switches.

Thanks again,

PJ

Reply to
PJ McLoughlin

How about using a controller/driver that accepts high level commands such as goto position X and generates the correct pulse sequence on-board ? These include ability to set speed and acceleration. There are several such serial port devices for around $100.:

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Reply to
Steve Parus

Your answers seem to be contradictory, so it's clear that I didn't communicate effectively. If you sequence the drive transistors with software, then {STEP, DIRECTION} or {UP, DOWN) inputs don't apply. (They're software too.) If the output transistors are sequenced with wired logic, then you need only to apply the correct pulsed. If you can point me to URLs that describe the driver board and any others involved, I'll have a firmer grasp of what you need to do and what to tell you.

You may have the option to full- or half step. Is there a reason to chose one mode over the other? The device I know as a lab jack is operated by a screw that rises at half the rate of the table itself. Is your device like that? If so, how do you propose to couple the motor to it?

Jerry

Reply to
Jerry Avins

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