SS2000MD7 Stepper Driver to UMI 7764 Interface Issues

[Astrophysics]

Hello,

I'm doing research at a labrotory at the Harvard-Smithsonain Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. Currently, I am prototyping a system to deposit layers of material only a couple angstroms thick on to ultrapure silicon wafers to form a man made bragg crystal for the eventual improvement in optics for x-ray astronomy. That is my background and has nothing to do with my question here.

Basically the procedure for applying these coatings has to be automated whereby a series of stepper motors operate inside a vaccum chamber to move various samples around under a DC magentron while it is supttering plasma. Most of the steppers are small enough that I can use a P70530 driver (https://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/P70530manual.pdf) in conjunction with a UMI-7764 (http://www.salt.ac.za/rss/docs/archive/public/Product%20Manuals/ni/motion%20control/umi-7764.pdf) to drive the smaller motors. My motion controller is a PCI 7330 (https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/370837b/resource/370837b.pdf). I have spent several days installing, configuring hardware, and learning labview to successfully move and have full control over any stepper I hook up to this driver. 

Now for my problem: I have a much larger driver, a SS2000MD7 (http://www.sal.wisc.edu/PFIS/docs/rss-vis/archive/public/Product%20Manuals/slo-syn/ss2000-md7.pdf) for driving a much larger stepper motor that sits in the bottom of the vacuum chamber and rotates a rotary stage. I know this motor works, as when I plug it into my P70530 it drives fine. I know this motor has been controlled by this driver in the past through labwindows/CVI using a different setup than my UMI. I see no reason why this driver should not work with the UMI, yet when I wire it on another axis (which has been tested and known to work) it fails to drive the motor when I issue it commands. As I understand it, the bare minimum you need to have going to a stepper driver is ground, step and direction connections.

I have tried almost every wiring configuration I can think of but can not get this motor turning. A heartfelt thank you to anyone who can provide me any assistance with this.

-Lucas Doyle

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

I briefly cruised through the 7330 and SS2007MD manuals, have you:

1. Make sure the AWO input is at a logic high (can probably use or invert the INHIBIT output of the 7330)

2. Have power going to the OPTO power input, the ground of the supply looks like it may need to be tied to GND of the 7330

It seems that the step and dir ouputs of the 7330 can provide up to 64mA of current to sufficiently drive the SS2007SM inputs, they only require 16mA.

-AK2DM

[Jochen]

Lucas,

maybe the issue is caused by wrong wiring of the open collector step command outputs. Please refer to this document for further information.

Kind regards,

Jochen Klier

National Instruments