Connect two 7344 motion controllers in one PC

[Giridhar_Rajan]

Can I use two NI - PCI 7344 motion controllers in one PC. My application requires 6 axis and hence I want to use two PCI 7344 motion controllers. I am already using one. Can I configure another one in the same PC to add more axes to my current system. If yes, then how to configure the other one, so that it acts as the 5th and 6th axes in my system. I'm using LabVIEW 7.1 in my application.

Regards,

Giridhar Rajan

Automation Engineer

Cruiser Controls

Mumbai, India

[Jochen]

You can add as many PCI-7344 boards to your PC as you want. The only limitation is the number of PCI-slots available. In your software you need to control the axes from the second PCI-7344 seperately from the axes of the first one. That means that there are no built in methods to start the axes on two or more boards synchronously. If this is not a feature that you need then everything is quite straight forward. If you need tight synchronization you might write an onboard program that's running on the second board and that waits e. g. for a breakpoint signal to be generated by the first board immediately after the axes are started.
Assumed that you need tight motion synchronization with the additional axes a better choice would be to use one PCI-7356 (6 axes) or a PCI-7358 (8 axes) instead of two PCI-7344. The 735x boards are pin- and software-compatible to the 734x boards. You could return your 7344 to NI and buy a 735x board with a fair discount ("hardware upgrade"). If this is an option for you please contact your local NI branch.

Best regards,

Jochen Klier
National Instruments Germany

[Buechsenschuetz]

We are using two 7344 controllers in one PC in many of our systems without any problems related to the number of controllers.

We sometimes have problems when two cards are installed and one of them is removed temporarily. Sometimes the FlexMotion software does not recognize the board properly when reinstalling it, and in one case the software claimed that there were TWO cards installed in a system were there was just one which was removed temporarily. At least in the latter case the problem could not be solved with NI software, our PC guru had to go down to the registry. However, these problems did not occur any more in the last few months.

[Giridhar_Rajan]

Thanks Jochen and  Buechsenschuetz for your valuable suggestions. Especially, the hardware upgrade option is something great.

Regards,

Giridhar Rajan,

Automation Engineer

Cruiser Controls

Mumbai, India