Motion Control Problem

[peterk3]

Hello everyone,

Firstly I would like to thank you all for your help in advance.

Ok, so I am operating two stepper motors through the use of Labview/MAX (I switched to MAX just to be able to operate the stepper motors).  My setup is a UMI 7764 controller and a 2035 step motor driver.  I ran a search in this forum and was able to find some helpful hints on how to target the problem.  As such I brought in an oscilloscope to test if steps were being sent. 

While attempting to run the motors in MAX I checked to see if any steps were being sent between the controller and motor driver.  The steps are being sent fine and everything seems to be ok at this location.

When the scope is connected between the motor driver and the actual stepper motor, steps are constantly being sent whether max is being operated or not, which agrees with the fact that the motors cannot be moved by hand even when I kill it in MAX.  So I guess my question is does anyone have any ideas on what could possibly be wrong with this?  My thoughts are that the motor drivers are shot, although I am a grad student who just started working with this setup 2 weeks ago, so my knowledge of the entire setup is still fairly limited.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Keith Peterson

[DJ_L.]

Hey Keith,

I went and checked out the web page for the 2035 stepper motor drive, and by reading the description I saw the following:

"The drive also includes an automatic feature to lower motor current by 50% anytime the motor is left at rest for more than one second. This feature can be disabled."

So this might be the cause of the constant current being sent to the motor. You can try disabling this feature and see if that helps. This is just one thing that you can check on in the 2035 motor drive user manual. There are probably other features that you can select for this drive as well, but I am not too familiar with this specific drive. Check out the user manual, and see if you can change some settings on it to allow the motion controller to control what gets sent out to the motor.

Another thing you can check on is if all the wiring is set up correctly. One thing specifically you can check on is if you have the Inhibit Out wired up from the UMI 7764 to the 2035. When you click on the kill operation in MAX, the drive should also be inhibited, so maybe you don't have something wired up properly. Does the 2035 drive expect an input signal to cause it to no longer output current? Last, maybe you can contact Applied Motion Products to see if they can help you in any way.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions about what I mentioned above. Thanks, and have a great day.

Regards,
DJ L.