Using MC_Touchprobe with P Series Drives

Owned by Perla Madrigal (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 29, 2024 by Corey Boyles
2 min read

The PAC can be paired with Parker P Series servo drives to solve registration or position capture applications. The position capture operation can be accomplished by using the MC_TouchProbe function block.

MC_TouchProbe requires an axis whose position will be captured (the Axis input) and information about how the position will be captured (the Trigger input). The Trigger input is a TRIGGER_REF structure.

For high-performance position capture, bFast should always be set to TRUE. The exact mode of capture can be defined using iTriggerNumber. The following modes are supported by default:

  • Mode 0: Touchprobe 1, rising edge

  • Mode 1: Touchprobe 1, falling edge

  • Mode 2: Touchprobe 2, rising edge

  • Mode 3: Touchprobe 2, falling edge

Once the drive's touchprobe is armed, MC_TouchProbe will hold its Busy output TRUE until the drive's touchprobe input makes the appropriate transition (rising or falling). Then, the drive will record the current position reported by the motor's encoder and MC_TouchProbe will report that position in engineering (scaled) units on its RecordedPosition output.

The P Drive's touchprobe inputs can be configured in Drive Support Tool. Any digital input can be set up as a touchprobe input. The PROBE1 and PROBE2 functions define which two digital inputs are to be used as inputs for Touchprobe 1 and 2 respectively. It is not necessary to have both PROBE1 and PROBE2 configured if only one touchprobe is needed for an application. The Digital Input panel in Drive Support Tool can be accessed from the toolbar.

The PROBE1 and PROBE2 functions can be selected from the dropdown menus.

The sample included in this article is a PAM project archive that shows how to use MC_TouchProbe. It has one P Drive configured in its EtherCAT_Master tree and a small WebVisualization interface to allow the user to experiment with the touchprobe feature. The sample can be downloaded using the link below.

[PAM 1.4: MC_TouchProbe -- P Drive (PAM 1.4).projectarchive]

[Quick link: PAC product page (North America)]
[Quick link: P Series product page (North America)]

27MAR2019 DCLIFFE