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Chapter 4
Standalone Operation
4.1
Introduction
The Stepper Driver T-Cube has been designed specifically to operate with lower
power stepper motors such as the Thorlabs ZST series, however it can also drive a
variety of other stepper motors (15V operation) equipped with or without encoder
feedback.
The unit offers a fully featured motion control capability including velocity profile
settings, limit switch handling, homing sequences and, for more advanced operation,
adjustment of settings such as lead screw pitch and gearbox ratio, allowing support
for many different actuator configurations. These parameters can be set via the APT
Server software - see Chapter 5. Furthermore, when used with the extensive range
of Thorlabs ZST motorised opto-mechanical products, many of these parameters are
automatically set to allow “out of the box” operation with no further “tuning” required.
The following brief overview explains how the front panel controls can be used to
perform a typical series of motor moves.
In conjunction with this chapter, it also may be useful to read the background on
stepper motor operation contained in Appendix E
.
