Controlling a stepper motor with LabVIEW?

[Novatron]

See the problem is, you need something to output the pulse train.

Right now I'm using LabVIEW to write an acceptance test for a stepper
motor, but I'm using a Galil servo/stepper PCI card in the computer,
connected to an Anaheim Automation stepper driver, which outputs the
pulse train.

LabVIEW can generate a pulse train, but it has to be able to tell some
piece of harware to actually output that signal.  As falkpl was
saying, you can use LabVIEW as the interface to something like a
stepper driver, but you need the hardware to do the work of outputting
the highs and lows.

[falkpl]

Two ways I had controlled stepper motors in the past is:
1.  The cheaper method: I used a pontech stp100 stepper driver (>$100)- this is a serial communication stepper motion controller, you can send the serial commands to program the motor and communicate with it through labview and VISA.
2.  I controlled many motors from compumotor with their own motor drivers which took a pulse train (each pulse caused a step of the motor) and controlled the steps from a 6602 counter/timer card and labview to provide the logic and user interface to the motors (there was feedback and sensors involved with this project).
Neither was very difficult and both were developed with labview 5.0 and 6.1 so I know you can do control with the software you already have.
Hope this helps some,
Paul

[Sheldon Stokes]

>I have a Smithy where my plans are what you have accomplished.
 
 
I was hesitant to talk too much about what I've done here because it's really not LabView or NI oriented.  I use TurboCNC in DOS 7.0 to control the steppers (on an HP 486 laptop).  DOS is so simple that it's damn near a real-time OS and I can get away with driving steppers.  The allegro chips are really amazing little devices (and they are very liberal with engineering samples), I designed my own boards based around them and etched them myself. 
 
An important thing about running open loop steppers is to make sure you have beefy steppers and run them a lot slower than they CAN go.  Torque falls off as speed increases, and frictional drag increases with speed.  So at some speed, the steppers start to skip steps and even stall.  The trick is to never get near that point even during rapid moves.  The other important point is that open loop steppers are really cheap to get CNC up and running, but it's a sleazy way to go.  Servos and encoders are the REAL way to do it if you can afford it. 
 
To keep this LabView oriented, I have written CNC "G-code" previewers in labview, and I've done come G-code loop unrollers and code generating utilities.  Nothing ready for prime-time, but lots of useful stuff.  I had brief thoughts of doing the controller itself in Labview, but I quickly put that out of my mind due to the problem with the parallel port under windows.  I could do it with a DIO board, but if I had the $$$ to buy a DIO board for this project, I probably would be using servos... :)
 
Sheldon 

[Nicholas]

I have done a few applications which controlled a steppers in the past, where labview served as the motion control and interface to a stepper motor system. 
 
 
Does anyone have a good program or suggestion on how to start making a program to control a series of stepper motors through a Anaheim Automation controller that has three axis?
 
I have looked at the site and I cant really find much on how to start--does anyone recommend a good basic labview starting point?
 
I know that I have motioncontrol and labview 7. I know that the hardware is complete and works well, but I have no idea how to control it through labview...
 
Would i want to use a VISA or something?
 
Thanks,
 
NMMessage Edited by Nicholas on 07-28-2005 02:29 PM