building block diagram to control stepper motor

[cuneytguven]

Hello,

I am a senior mechanical engineering student and a specific part of my final project involves controlling the motion of a stepper motor in labview. The idea is that we will enter the value of a certain parameter to the software and the control system will dictate how many steps the motor should rotate in order to move a power screw mechanism to a desired position. Since we have not much experience on this subject, we are looking for guidelines or tutorials related to driving stepper motor in labview, specifically. Can anyone suggest a step-by-step tutorial which we can benefit to build the relevant block diagram in a short time? Our stepper motor is NEMA 17.

Thanks.

[SteveChandler]

Read through these links and see if any of them help. Also NEMA 17 is the physical mounting geometry specification and has nothing to do with control of the motor.

[cuneytguven]

I've already read through these links and I coudn't find an answer. That's why I opened a new topic. Thanks for the valuable information anyway. 

[SteveChandler]

Do you have the NI motion control software and hardware? If not and depending on your budget you might consider using an Arduino. There is a LabVIEW driver for communicating with it. Also there are several stepper motor shileds you can get. A shield is an Arduino peripheral. Check out Sparkfun. If this is an industrial application with a large budget you should stick with the NI products because of the support you get. The motion control software has lots of examples to get you started.

[drjdpowell]

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@cuneytguven wrote:

I am a senior mechanical engineering student and a specific part of my final project involves controlling the motion of a stepper motor in labview. The idea is that we will enter the value of a certain parameter to the software and the control system will dictate how many steps the motor should rotate in order to move a power screw mechanism to a desired position. Since we have not much experience on this subject, we are looking for guidelines or tutorials related to driving stepper motor in labview, specifically. Can anyone suggest a step-by-step tutorial which we can benefit to build the relevant block diagram in a short time? Our stepper motor is NEMA 17.

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The programming depends on the controller you are using to run the motor.   If I needed a stepper motor controller, I would first consider one from Allmotion such as the EZ17, which mounts on the back of a NEMA 17 motor and is controlled by simple serial commands (eg. V1000A23000="Go to position 23000 at 1000 steps per second").  

But if you already have a controller, you need to say what it is if you want help in programming it.

[cuneytguven]

LS1041 (18-50Vdc 1.4Arms 2Apk) microstep driver and arduino microcontroller 

[-lucho-]

Hello hope you are doing great!

Definitely the Motion control and motion Hardware from National Instruments are a good starting point for your application.

As our fellow member recommended this is a great link to get started with.

http://www.ni.com/motion/setup/

Luis A.
Applications Engineer.

National Instruments.