Introduction; About The 7344 Controllers - National Instruments 7344 User Manual

Introduction

About the 7344 Controllers

© National Instruments Corporation
This chapter describes the FlexMotion 7344 controllers and their operation.
Thank you for purchasing a 7344 controller. The 7344 controllers have
advanced motion control performance along with easy-to-use software
tools and add-on motion VI libraries for use with LabVIEW and
BridgeVIEW—LabVIEW for Industrial Automation.
The 7344 line of controllers are a combination of servo and stepper motor
controllers for PCI, PXI, and 1394 bus computers. These controllers
provide fully programmable motion control for up to four independent or
coordinated axes of motion, with dedicated motion I/O for limit and home
switches and additional I/O for general-purpose functions. You can
configure any axis for either servo or stepper motor control. You can use
these controllers for all position and velocity control applications,
including the following:
• Point-to-point positioning
• Velocity profiling
• 3-D Linear interpolation
• Electronic gearing
• Circular, helical, and spherical interpolation
• Time-based motion integration
• Vector space motion
Servo axes can control servo motors, servo hydraulics, servo valves, and
other servo devices. Servo axes always operate in closed-loop mode. These
axes use quadrature encoders or analog inputs for position and velocity
feedback and provide analog command outputs with an industry-standard
range of ±10 V. You can also configure the 7344 controllers as stepper axes
to control stepper motors. These axes can operate in open or closed-loop
mode. They use quadrature encoders for position and velocity feedback
(closed-loop only), and provide step/direction or clockwise (CW)
/counter-clockwise (CCW) digital command outputs. All stepper axes
support full, half, and microstepping applications.
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7344 Hardware User Manual