National Instruments 778417-01 Stepper Motion Controller

The Stepper Motion Controller Device, National Instruments part number 778417-01, is part of the PCI-7334 series of devices. With seamless coordination for up to four axes of motion, this device is specifically designed for point-to-point motion applications. Its advanced features, which guarantee smooth motion even at high speeds, include high-performance stepper generation, real-time system integration, and linear interpolation.

The 778417-01 controller is specifically made for PCI and PXI bus computers and provides completely programmable motion control. With a Motorola MC68331 real-time 32-bit CPU, an Analog Devices ADSP-2185 digital signal processor (DSP), and custom field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), it has a dual-processor architecture. This architecture maximizes command throughput and system performance by offloading complex motion operations from the host PC while facilitating high-speed communications via a FIFO bus interface.

Each axis of the 778417-01 controller is equipped with dedicated motion I/O for end-of-travel limit and home switch inputs, breakpoint output, trigger input, and encoder feedback rates of up to 20 MHz. It also provides non-dedicated user input/output, such as four analog inputs for ±10 V signals, joystick inputs, or analog sensor monitoring, which can also provide feedback for loop closure. It also has 32 bits of digital I/O.

The controller facilitates smooth communication across different National Instruments products, including image acquisition (IMAQ) and data acquisition (DAQ) devices, by supporting the company's Real-Time System Integration (RTSI) bus. Users can quickly synchronize several motion, IMAQ, or DAQ device operations to a single trigger or timing event by using the RTSI bus.

With a maximum update rate of 62.5 μs/axis and a total update rate of 250 μs for four axes, the 778417-01 controller performs well in terms of trajectory update rate range (62.5 to 500 μs/sample). It is possible to accomplish multi-axis synchronization in fewer update samples. Using encoder feedback or open-loop stepper control, the controller guarantees exact position precision with ±1 quadrature count and 1 full, half, or microstep accuracy, respectively.