how to program a pneumatic cylinder in labview

[star_lancer]

could someone tell me how to program cylinders in labview?
I will have multiple cylinders, but programming one will do.
We plan on using buttons to fire them.

[Luke Pike]

The Cylinders should be controlled by solenoids. Use the Solenoid Open vi to open one and use the Solenoid Get/Set vi's to control it. You can wire a joystick button directly into a Solenoid Set vi to control it if you wish.

[pyr0b0y]

so when programming to operate the canisters, you dont need to use the compressor? i tried the solenoid open -> solenoid get/set -> close. i then have joysitck open-> joystick get-> button 1-> connected to solenoid set. will this fill the canister, and how do i go about programming for the pistons? if you can, can u post a picture of what it looks like? thx!

[Luke Pike]

What I described was for controling just a solenoids. To operate the compressor, you need to use the Compressor Open vi, specify a relay channel and the pressure switch channel, the you need to start it with the Compressor Start vi. Make sure you have all the pneumatics set up correctly. If it is, it will fill the canisters by itself until it's up to pressure.

[pyr0b0y]

so if i add a compressor start, it will automaticlly start the compressor and fill the canisters when i deploy? then i dont need an actual control for it???or is it better if i wire it to a button on the joystick? is it possible you can post a picture of the basic structure? it would help me out a lot

[Luke Pike]

Sure. The compressor should be wired into a spike relay on the electrical panel, which should be wired into one of the relay ports on the sidecar. The pressure switch should be wired into a digital I/O on the sidecar. The attached image shows code that will start the compressor, fill up the canisters, and stop itself once the canisters get full. Once the pressure gets low again, it will run until it is full.

Now you can code solenoids and the cylinders will have air from the compressor to run.

Also, here's another post of mine showing both the compressor and two solenoids being used: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...367#post813367

[Sheik Rahaman]

hey can you post a picture of how you would control the solenoids?

[plnyyanks]

How's this? Just use Solenoid Set.vi and give it either a boolean or enum to set the solenoid to either on or off.

[Sheik Rahaman]

great thanks!

[sebehr]

Here's a site that I've found that has helped out team a lot. Team 358 has a bunch of simple of examples.

http://team358.org/files/programming...2009-/LabVIEW/