Skip to content

Elevator Control Tool

Jump to bottom
Chris Chronopoulos edited this page Aug 12, 2023 · 2 revisions

The Elevator Control Tool is used to control the heavy mechanics of the Modular Insertion System, also known as the "elevator" mechanism. The elevator is driven by a pair of Zaber X-LRQ450HL-E01 stages controlled by a X-MCC2 multi-axis lockstep controller.

The Elevator Control Tool is accessed from the Tools menu:

Main Window > Tools > Elevator Control Tool

elevator_tab1

At the top, there is a drop-down menu which will auto-populate with the first appropriate motor controller available. If you have multiple motor controllers connected, select the one attached to your stages by its comport number.

At the bottom of the window there are labels which indicate the current elevator position, and its "twist" - the difference in position between the two stages. Although they are in a "lockstep" configuration, external forces can leave them in a slightly offset position. This measurement can help to inform you if there is any torsion being introduced to the framework. Values of < 5 microns are common, and generally not problematic.

The rest of the controls are organized into 3 tabs. The first tab is used for firmware setpoints - these are stage positions which are stored in non-volatile memory in the Zaber firmware. There are 16 firmware setpoints available. To set the value of a setpoint manually, right-click and select "Edit". You can also grab the current position of the stages with the option "Grab Current Location". "Reset" will reset the firmware setpoint to its default value of 0. To move the stages to a set point, highlight the setpoint from the list and click "Go to selected".

NOTE: The elevator stages can be halted by pressing the Escape key from any window in the application - this immediately halts all stages, including heavy mechanics and probe (New Scale) stages.

The second tab is for software setpoints. These can be set by the user, and saved to / loaded from disk.

elevator_tab2

To add a new software setpoint, right-click in the empty space, and in the dialog that pops up, give the setpoint a name and position. You can also "Grab current location" for a software setpoint. You can edit, delete one, or clear all of the setpoints from the right-click menu. Again, click "Go to selected" to move the stages to the highlighted position.

The third tab is for "advanced" settings - currently the only control is the motor speed:

elevator_tab3

Click the button to adjust the speed of the elevator when moving between positions. The units reported are native Zaber steps per second.

Clone this wiki locally