Mechatrolink meets LabView for simplified motion control

Control equipment manufacturer Yaskawa introduced LabView drivers for their NT 100 PCI card, making it easy to have any PC class computer programmed in the LabView test-programming environment from National Instruments host a real-time servo system interconnected through Yaskawa’s Mechatrolink networking system

By Control Engineering Staff August 23, 2007

Waukegan, IL —Control equipment manufacturer Yaskawa introduced LabView drivers for their NT 100 PCI card, making it easy to have any PC class computer programmed in the LabView test-programming environment from National Instruments host a real-time servo system interconnected through Yaskawa’s Mechatrolink networking system.

Mechatrolink is a digital servo network that the company says reduces wiring between servo drives and a host controller. It enables quick and reliable bi-directional transfer of servo axis data. A serial encoder interface further improves the communication between motion control components by giving the controller access to motor data.

Software drivers provide a simple way for a PC-class computer to host a real-time motion-control system. Source: Yaskawa

The new LabView drivers for the NT100 PCI card now allow an ordinary Microsoft Windows XP PC to be the host controller for a real-time servo system. Simple, asynchronous, point-to-point commands are initiated in the LabView environment, while the real-time position loop and trajectory generation is handled by each individual servo drive. Trapezoidal motion profiles, jerk-limited accelerations, as well as sophisticated control loops, are some of the servo drive’s high-performance features.

—Edited by C.G. Masi , senior editor, Control Engineering


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