Replacing a legacy motion control board

[mgoldman]

I am trying to update a 12-year-old motion control system that was initially implemented with a pcStep-OL motion control board, a nuLogic interface board, and ValueMotion software.  I am planning to replace the pcStep and software entirely but I would like to avoid replacing the interface board.  Documentation on the nuLogic 900-1012-001 interface board seems to be non-existent, with the exception of this.  At the moment, the plan is to buy a NI PCI-7332, which seems to have the motion IO capability to control the two axes of motion as well as the DIO capability to replace an old Lab-PC+ card.  The first drawback to this plan is that I will have to perform some soldering nastiness to connect the two IO ports to the existing interfaces, which take 50-pin ribbon cables.  The second drawback is that the lack of good documentation has left me uncertain as to whether the new hardware and software will even be compatible with the legacy interface board once the correct pins have been connected.

Does anyone have any experience with this?  Does this plan sound like it will work or does anyone have a better idea?  Thank you!

[Eric_R]

Hi Brftskier

I looked over your application and it sounds like you have the right idea. I recommend replacing the drive as well though with one of the newer MID series drives. These can connect directly to the PCI-7332 which will really make setup easy. The decision to do this is entirely based off of how much longer you expect your existing drives to last for. It would be really unfortunate to spend time creating custom cabling and reprogramming the application only to have the drive fail after a couple of months in operation.

If you do choose to use the existing system I recommend a UMI-7764 for interfacing between your motion controller card and the drive. This is the interface we use to control third party drives and will allow you to hook up your system much faster with greater reliability. You can break apart the 50 pin ribbon cables and run the wiring directly out to all the breakout pins on the UMI. If at any point in the future you decide to change drives you can still use the UMI to connect to a new 3rd party drive allowing you more options if you need to select a new one.

MID:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/3852

UMI:

http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/3970

Please let me know if you have any additional questions regarding your application or setup.

Thank You

Eric Reid