High-Speed Control

Machines are measured by three key metrics: quality, throughput, and downtime. Although the concept of "high speed" could theoretically affect all three, it mostly improves throughput. The block diagram shows some components of a typical machine from the hydraulic actuators and AC motors, through I/O hardware and control, up to data logging and supervisory control with a human machine interface (HMI). You can use National Instruments hardware and software at every point in the diagram beyond the actuators and sensors, giving you a common platform to design, prototype, and deploy each part of the machine. Furthermore, NI hardware platform options offer increased speed and durability over other machine control hardware. The modular control brick (National Instruments CompactRIO) is high-speed, rugged, and physically smaller than the industrial computer (PXI). However, the computer has more I/O options and increased memory and computing power.

Third-party hardware - The lowest layer of this vertical flow diagram shows the physical mechanical system consisting of the actual AC motors and hydraulic parts. You can purchase hydraulic motion and motors from many third-party vendors specializing in this particular area.

Sensors/actuators (third-party) - To control the large mechanical parts, a designer needs sensors and actuators that give control and feedback to the system. You also can purchase these physical sensors and actuators through third-party vendors.

NI I/O hardware - Stimulating actuators and measuring sensors may require many different input and output signals. NI offers modular hardware platforms that adapt to the various I/O types needed for this machine architecture.

FPGA hardware - FPGA technology is a key differentiator for machine designers. These programmable chips offer the speed and reliability of a hardware design while providing the flexibility and reconfigurability of software. You can use them for digital logic, digital signal processing, pulse-width modulation (PWM) I/O, PID control, and many other functional machine design needs.

Real-time processing - Both National Instruments platform options include real-time processors that you can program to deterministically handle industry-standard state-machine logic. You also can use NI real-time processing options for complex control algorithms (requiring floating-point processing), data logging, alarming, network communication, report generation, and tag-based communication for sending and receiving data from a supervisory computer network and/or an HMI.