Hello:
I am currently working on a project which involves the control/systems part of a fuser test fixture. We are using PIDs to set/control the fuser temperature, a gauge valve to set the initial pressure that the rollers will have, and a servo motor with a respective servo amplifier. I have a good general idea of how servo motors work; however I am stuck steeping from a simple “hobby servo motor” to a high power servo motor.
My approach to this is the following:
Once the pressure is set from the gauge valve, power up the Uno board and which will enable/activate a solid state relay and use pneumatics to bring down the rollers up to the desired pressure. Place a pressure sensor in between the rollers to measure that analog signal, read it, and store it. Set the PID to the desired temperature and place a temperature sensor near the fuser to read and store that analog signal as well.
Now here is where I get confused, I would like to communicate with the servo amplifier via serial RS-232:
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I am not sure how to produce a signal that would drive the amplifier from the previous analog inputs (temperature and pressure)?
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I know that the Uno outputs 40 mA current and its most likely not enough to drive an amplifier, so would I need a shield board as well?
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How would I code the Uno? Like is it ADC input to PWM output to drive the amplifier and then the motor?
The main goal in a few words is read the pressure and temperature analog signals and once those two are set, activate the servo amplifier and from there drive the motor. I am really confused in the concepts and I would appreciate a whole lot if someone can help me out with or suggesting me if there are similar Arduino family boards that can help me out achieving this.
The servo amplifier is this one:
http://www.copleycontrols.com/motion/pd … rGuide.pdf
And the servo motor is this one:
http://www.parkermotion.com/products/Ro … 67_29.html
Thanks a lot!