LabVIEW Justificaiton

[brethigh]

Hello,

I'm an Electrical Engineering Technician at a company that produces Turf Care industry engine parts.  We're venturing into electrical components and my job is more of an R&D setting as opposed to a mass production setting.  My last employer was a mass producer of electronic PCBs and used LabVIEW extensively for product testing after production.  Since my current position with my new employer doesn't deal with production and is more R&D focused, would LabVIEW be helpful at all?  I realize that there are several factors that need to be accounted for to truly answer that question, but I'm curious if there are others in a similar environment that use LabVIEW.  I'm wanting to take the NI training for LabVIEW and need to justify the cost to management.  Is there anyone out there in a similar situation that can give me some examples or insight?  Thank you.

[RavensFan]

I started using LabVIEW within an R&D environment.  That was 14 years ago.  There were 2 major types of activities I used it for.

1.  To develop control systems for our test stands.  These were very custom test stands that would have cost a small fortune to hire someone to develop custom code for them.  I could keep those costs in house by doing the programming myself with LabVIEW and be able to continually improve the code.  Sometimes a test might require an operating mode we hadn't originally thought of, so I was able to make the modifications to the test stand control code to handle that.

2.  Actual data acquisition during the test.  Since our tests might vary widely from one project to another, the code we used to accumulate and analyze the data would change frequently.  LabVIEW gave me the ability to write the code quickly or modify code from a previous test to collect whatever data we needed in a particular test project.

We are still using the test stand control code and using new variations of the older LabVIEW code during the test runs.  One of the projects in my task list is to update all the code to make sure it can run on newer versions of LabVIEW running under Windows 10.

[Hooovahh · Accepted solution]

So LabVIEW is a programming language and can be used for just about anything software related.  So the first thing to ask yourself is do you need a programming language?  Or really do you see yourself needing to write software to do tasks?  Is there a language you prefer or are familiar with?  Is there people at your company or job openings for software?  What is the preferred language and toolsets? 

If it is just you and you can do what you want, and you have no preference then I'd suggest LabVIEW since it works best in automated testing environments, and interfacing with hardware.  It can do all kinds of things but integrating with hardware is one of its best features.  Need a thing to do a thing?  Then have another thing do another thing?  What made me open my eyes to LabVIEW was how it could interact with the real world.  Up to that point my CS101 and CS102 classes taught me how to write software, read from a file, prompt the user for a thing, and other software basics.  But when I saw LabVIEW could automate the tasks of a person in the real world that is when it clicked for me.  Need a DMM to take a reading, then a camera to take a picture and tell me if a label is aligned, or what is on a barcode?  Then turn an actuator on to engage some reading?  That can all be done pretty easily.  Of course once your application starts growing you need software disciplines like source code control, proper coding practices, and other tools.

Anyway a bit long winded but I think knowing the value of LabVIEW comes from the experience of using it and other things.  Knowing the amount of time you can save, and how quickly you can spin something up in a prototype environment, and how much a single person or a small team can get done.  Being able to quickly change and add things is a major benefit.  Of course doing things in the wrong way will always result in painting yourself into a corner.

Take some of the free online training first.  NI used to have a DAQ class for beginners to basically show them how to setup software to take readings and do things, but I haven't seen that offered in a while.

[RTSLVU]

I have worked in an R&D lab for the past 20 years and use LabVIEW constantly. 

There are so many tests that have to be ran during the design cycle and more importantly the design qualification cycle that having the ability to automate a test in a short amount of time becomes important.

Over the years I have automated 90% of qualification testing in our test lab.

[Yamaeda]

During my ~12 years of LV more than half of my projects have been towards R&D. All have included hardware control/communication except one small 'DB viewer/editor' (personally i've done some more 'pure' software projects for the simple reason that LV is what i'm most knowledgable in). The only real difference i see between R&D and production is tempo/volume, and R&D often requires better measurements. 

How will you validate your products are working? At all? Will you do manual tests or would automated test be a good solution? Would a test rig help with testing or will you try to attach loose wires and hope stuff work? If you have a jig/rig, wouldn't automated test be logical?

To a large degree i wouldn't think of it as how much it costs to get LV, but rather what the cost is in not doing it! 

/Y

[RTSLVU]

Case in point: My company always does a "first article" run of products manufactured overseas and a field trial (beta test). First article and field trials usually comes months before the product is ready for production and before any production ATE is completed.

So calibrating, testing, and preparing all those first article units for field trials falls on Engineering R&D.

This is where LabVIEW comes in handy, as you might have to test and calibrate 100 units.

[brethigh]

Hoooovahh,

The online training is very helpful for understanding some of the overall basics.  I'm going through some of the modules right now and while there's a lot to learn, it seems pretty straight-forward.  Thanks!

[billko]

This is a learning forum, so if you have any questions, fire away - we'll be happy to confuse you!  Please create a new topic for each question you have, unless they are related questions, so we don't really become confused.  😄

[Gregory]

Since you have come to a LabVIEW forum, you will find no shortage of people who love LabVIEW and have used it in many environments throughout their career 🙂 It is great for automating R&D and production tasks. One thing to note as you go through the training is that NI has started to release a new version of LabVIEW called NXG. It doesn't have all the capabilities of the current LabVIEW (i.e. LabVIEW 2019) but is expected to eventually be the flagship offering. For now I would recommend starting with the current version of LabVIEW, not NXG.

Also, NI makes another product called TestStand which can sequentially run code modules from several different programming languages (including LabVIEW of course). This product is well-suited to higher volume production, especially where you have different products that require a very similar suite of tests with slightly different parameters. Just something to keep in mind if you do find yourself in more of a production environment down the road.

[Hooovahh]

Yeah those links are good for learning the basics.  Just enough to give you the confidence that you can do anything.  Which is a powerful and dangerous situation.  I feel like learning the basics of LabVIEW can be done quite easily with a few videos and examples.  Getting beyond a beginner takes mentoring, formal classes, or struggling for years trying to absorb everything you can.