NEWS RELEASE – March 21, 2006 – National Instruments is extending its offering for industrial applications with new PCI data acquisition (DAQ) and motion control devices. The NI PCI-6230 isolated M Series DAQ board features analog and digital I/O lines with built-in digital isolation for direct connectivity to industrial sensors. The NI PCI-7390 position (pulse) command motion controller with built-in isolation offers direct connectivity to popular motion drives, including Yaskawa Sigma II, Mitsubishi MR-J2S and Panasonic Minas A, and provides advanced synchronization capabilities with NI vision and DAQ hardware.
“Isolation circuitry reduces common problems engineers may run into, including ground loops and common-mode voltage limitations,” said Dave Lohbeck, NI Compliance Engineering manager. “The high transient withstand capability of isolated circuit technology guards against voltage spikes, thus helping protect the hardware, engineer and measured data. With the new NI product offerings of the PCI-6230 and the PCI-7390, engineers can safely obtain measurements and control actuators or motors in most environments.”The PCI-6230 M Series DAQ board features eight 16-bit analog inputs with a 250 kS/s sampling rate, four 16-bit analog outputs with a 500 kS/s maximum output rate, six digital inputs and four digital outputs.
The board uses digital isolation technology based on chip-scale transformers for increased signal bandwidth and features 1,950 VDC/ 1,400 Vrms of channel-to-bus isolation withstand for up to 5 s and 60 VDC continuous bank isolation. In addition, the NI-STC 2 system timing controller, NI-PGIA 2 amplifiers and NI-MCal self-calibration circuitry work together to improve performance and accuracy while keeping costs low. Engineers can use the PCI-6230 M Series board for industrial data acquisition, monitoring and control applications such as reading from encoders, flow meters and proximity sensors and controlling valves, pumps and relays. The board works with NI-DAQmx driver software, which reduces application development time with programmatic configuration and automatic code generation.
It also integrates seamlessly with the NI LabVIEW graphical development platform, and engineers can configure it using NI measurement services software on a variety of operating systems, including NI LabVIEW Real-Time, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux®. The PCI-7390 motion controller, which features built-in isolation technology, multi-axis coordination and I/O synchronization, provides direct connectivity to popular industry drives, including Yaskawa Sigma II, Mitsubishi MR-J2S and Panasonic Minas A. The PCI-7390 controller is a four-axis position (pulse) command motion controller that offers fully programmable motion control for up to four independent or coordinated axes of motion.
Equipped with built-in optical isolation, the PCI-7390 controller also features dedicated motion I/O for limit and home switches and additional I/O for general-purpose functions including “in-position,” “inhibit input/drive alarm” and “servo ready.” The PCI-7390 is shipped with the NI-Motion driver that includes motion controller configuration and test utilities; a VI library for LabVIEW; and functions for the NI LabWindows/CVI ANSI C development environment, C and Visual Basic. In addition, the controller integrates seamlessly with NI Motion Assistant to generate LabVIEW or C code for rapid application development.
Engineers can use the powerful motion capabilities of the PCI-7390 controller to improve performance and perform point-to-point or straight-line vector moves, as well as arbitrary and complex motion trajectories through circular, spherical or helical interpolation. The PCI-7390 controller also offers high-performance features such as position capture triggers and position compare breakpoints for high-speed synchronization of motion with data acquisition and vision hardware in the system.
About National Instruments
For 30 years, National Instruments has been a technology pioneer and leader in virtual instrumentation – a revolutionary concept that has changed the way engineers and scientists in industry, government and academia approach measurement and automation. Leveraging PCs and commercial technologies, virtual instrumentation increases productivity and lowers costs for test, control and design applications through easy-to-integrate software, such as NI LabVIEW, and modular measurement and control hardware for PXI, PCI, PCI Express, USB and Ethernet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 3,800 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past seven years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America.
