what hardware do i need to control 9 axis motion?

[adepssimius]

I am trying to find some hardware that could be used to control either 6 axis or 9 axis motion.  Specifically I need 10V analog outputs to control motor drivers and specialized controllers. What kind of hardware could I use to accomplish this?

[A_Person]

Can you provide any more specific information on the drives you are trying to control?  Are you controlling stepper or servo motors?

Our list of motion controll cards can be found here but if you can provide some more specific information we can help provide a better recommendation.

[adepssimius]

I need to be able to control 6 stepper motors and 3 piezo actuators via labview.

[A_Person]

I would need more specific information on the drives in order to make a good recommendation.  However, based on your first post, you can get 10V analog signals from basically any of our multifunction DAQ boards.  You can view the available boards at ni.com/daq and find a card that has at least 9 analog outputs.

Like I said, a lot of this is dependent on what kind of signal your drives are really looking for.  Let us know if you have any further information you can provide.

[Jochen]

For motion control applications NI motion control devices are a much better choice than DAQ boards. NI motion control boards run the trajectory generation and the control loop onboard and provide an easy to use programming library. This makes programming very straight forward and provides real-time behavior (required for control tasks) without the necessity of using a complete real-time environment for your application.

The most powerful NI motion control board (NI 7358) supports 8 axis, so there would be a requirement for at least two boards. I'm a bit surprised by your statement, that you need 10 V outputs for stepper motors. Typically stepper drives accept digital step and direction signals. If this is true for your drives also, you could use an NI 7334 board for four steppers and an NI 7356 board to control the piezos and the other two steppers. Depending on your requirements (which axes need to be tightly synchronized with each other?) other constellations could make sense.

Regards,

Jochen Klier

National Instruments

[adepssimius]

oops sorry. I forgot to mention that my requirements had changed somewhat between my first post and my post on the types of motors used.  Initially I was thinking of using a 9 axis piezo actuator system, the drivers of which accept a 0-10V control signal. By the time I replied, I had ruled out using all piezos because of the relatively high cost to get significant travel.

The two boards you reccomended look like they would work for my application.  However, having a 4 axis stepper control and then another 2 axis control, I would think it difficult to control 2 sets of 3 axis motion (in addition to 3 axis piezo fine adjust), which is my end goal.  Would I need to buy two cards that can do at least 3 axis in addition to something else for my piezo outputs?

[Jochen]

The configuration that I have suggested provides 10 axes, so you have some flexibility there in shifting the axes around. For your setup I'd suggest to run 3 stepper axes on the 7334 and the other set of 3 stepper axes on the 7356. This still leaves another set of 3 axes on the 7356 that can be used for your piezos.

Could you please provide some information about the type of moves you are planning to do? Are these linear point to point moves or do you need a more sophisticated type of trajectory? Are there any special requirements in terms of synchronizing the different sets of axes amongst each other or do you need deterministic timing between the moves? Any application specific information will help me to suggest the best solution for your application.

By the way: What type of piezo actuators are you going to use? Are you talking about piezo stack actuators or about nanomotion type actuators?

Jochen

[adepssimius]

I didnt realize that there were so many axes in the setup you suggested.  for some reason i was under the impression that one card had 2 axes and 3 outputs for piezos and the other had 4 axes.  The moves I will be doing are all linear, no curves at all.  I will be using http://www.thorlabs.com/NewGroupPage9.cfm?ObjectGroup_ID=1106 for piezo motion.

[Jochen]

Thank you for this insight. I had a look at this 3-axis piezo stack stage and I'm wondering which type of drive you are planning to use. Do you need closed loop control or is open loop control ok for your application? If you plan to do closed loop control, which type of position feedback signals do you want to use?

Thanks,

Jochen

[adepssimius]

there is a driver recommended on their site, it accepts a 10V control input and is basically a voltage amplifier.  I am not looking for closed loop control as I have a manual unrelated feedback system.