Soft motion interface

Engineers now can use the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical development environment to create distributed motion applications with the SoftMotion Controller for Copley CANopen and ORMEC IEEE 1394 intelligent drives.

The controller is a soft motion interface between Motion driver software and distributed intelligent drives. Engineers now can program IEEE 1394-based ServoWire SM drives from ORMEC and CANopen-based Accelnet and Xenus drives from Copley with the Motion API in LabVIEW.

They can also prototype their distributed motion application using Motion Assistant.

With the controllers, engineers in semiconductor, biomedical, textile, packaging and other industries can use NI programmable automation controllers such as industrial PC- and PXI-based hardware for their distributed motion applications.

A distributed motion architecture offers many advantages over centralised motion, including simplified cabling with lower set-up and maintenance costs. With the controller, engineers can also use NI PACs to incorporate vibration monitoring, web connectivity and high-speed analog I/O into their distributed motion applications.

The controller runs on LabVIEW Real-Time ETS for Copley CANopen drives and LabVIEW Real-Time RTX for ORMEC servowire drives. The Motion 7.0 driver interfaces between the controller and the development environment on Windows 2000/XP. In addition to using LabVIEW with Motion Assistant, engineers can program the Motion 7.0 driver in LabWindows/CVI, Microsoft Visual Basic and C programming.