Does NI sell a product like this? Our company is looking to purchase a motion control system that creates rotary motion based on a user specified angle vs. time function. I am having trouble finding what we need from vendors of motion control products. The input to the system needs to be an angle vs. time plain-text computer file such as this:
Example Angle vs Time file
-------------------------------------------------------
Angle(degrees) Time(seconds)
0 0
5 1
6 1.5
8 1.8
10 2
14 5
18 6
15 7
12 8
9 9
5 10
2 11
0 12
---------------------------------------------------------
The system output should be rotary motion that matches the input angle vs. time profile as closely as physically possible. I understand there might be hardware limitations in the system which may affect the actual motion profile (like no instantaneous accelleration). The torque load on the motor will be small (3 inch-oz). The fixture that will connect to this system can be easily rotated by hand with little resistance. The system must be able to follow motion profiles that are at most 2 hours long, containing up to 50000 discrete moves. The resolution must be 1/10th of a degree.
The user interface must be very simple:
1) Load an angle vs time profile on a PC from a plain text file using a File browser dialog
2) Click buttons on a simple motion control panel to position the motor to its "home" position (1 "Move" button, 1 "Distance" field)
3) Click a button to set the home position
4) Click a "GO" button which starts motion that follows the angle vs. time profile.
Does such a system exist? If so, where? We currently have a real-time system like this that I built but the stepper motor controller does not have enough RAM to store compiled motion profiles with more than 1600 discrete moves. Please reply to this post if you know an off the shelf product that can do all this.
Thanks,
Richard
