Hi,I am currently mechanizing an optical microscope and want to control the stages using stepper motors. I have stepper motor controllers that communicate with the motors but I need to input a clock pulse of which I can vary the frequency in order to control the speed of each motor.I will also need to be able to send a high or low signal in order to control the direction of each motor I am using LabView 8 and have a PCI 6602 counter/timer. I have used labiew before with a DAQ card (basicly using the DAQ Assistant module) but am finding this a bit more difficult . So far I can have managed to operate one motor using a VI from the example finder called: Generate pulse train (NI-TIO).VI (attached). With this however I can't change the Frequency as the program is running. I have also used the NXT addons to control the NXT motors via the LEGO NXT block but that program isnt transferable to use with the 6602. I wanted to ask if there is a better VI that I could use as a starting point than the example I have found.Also having read some other posts I am wondering if there might be any problems generating two clock pulses at the same time e.g. to allow the x and y stages to move at the same time achieving diagonal motion. N.B. The overall aim of the project is to also add a camera to allow remote controll of the microscope via the web but I dont think that it affects this stage of the development of the program.

Counter/Timer

PCI 6602 to control 4 stepper motors on a mechanised microscope.

Hi Anthony,

Do you need to manually adjust the stepper motor from a knob in LabVIEW? The previous example was a hardware-timed solution so you could have specific control over the rate. If the exact rate of the motor is not important, you could try out this example that I put together:

Using SW-Timed Digital I/O to Control a Stepper Motor with DAQmx

Regards,

"The other John P"

John Passiak