RTC
®
5 PC Interface Board
Rev. 1.9 e
8 Advanced Functions for Scan Head and Laser Control
152
innovators for industry
8
Advanced Functions for Scan Head and Laser Control
8.1 i
DRIVE
®
Functions
SCANLAB’s i
DRIVE
®
scan systems (intelli
SCAN
®
,
intelli
SCAN
de
®
, intelli
DRILL
®
, intelli
cube
®
,
intelli
WELD
®
, vario
SCAN
de
) utilize the company’s
i
DRIVE
®
technology. This new servo and control
approach exploits the advantages of fully digital
servo electronics to deliver significantly expanded
functionality. An enhanced transfer protocol
between the servo electronics and the controller facil-
itates support of all the new features (also see the
following section).
As a result, scan systems with i
DRIVE
®
functionality
allow to configure a number of settings. The user can
for example
• select the data type to be transmitted from scan
system to the controller,
• select an appropriate dynamic configuration
(tuning),
• set a desired PosAcknowledge threshold value,
• change the scan system’s effective calibration,
• configure the scan system’s start behavior or
• perform a fault diagnosis or verify intact data
transfer capability.
With an RTC
®
5, most i
DRIVE
®
functions can be
executed via
command’s execution, no position data will be trans-
mitted from the RTC
®
5 to the scan system. As a
result, the galvanometer scanners’ movements might
briefly be interrupted. However, for scan systems
with SL2-100 interfaces (operated without an
XY2-100 converter) specific i
DRIVE
®
functions can be
executed via the command
simulta-
neously to normal communication, such that neither
the transmission of position data nor the movements
of the galvanometer scanners will be interrupted.
All i
DRIVE
®
functions are described in the following
sections.
8.1.1 Transfer Protocol
Data transfer between RTC
®
5 and scan systems
follows the SL2-100 protocol, which supports the full
functionality of i
DRIVE
®
technology. With i
DRIVE
®
scan systems this protocol allows, for example, status
signals of the X and Y axes to be separately and simul-
taneously evaluated. For a 3D scan system, Z-axis
status signals can be simultaneously queried via the
channel of the scan head connector to which the Z-
axis is connected.
SCANLAB’s XY2-100 converter can be used for
i
DRIVE
®
scan systems equipped with a conventional
XY2-100 or XY2-100 Enhanced interface. It converts
the RTC
®
5’s SL2-100 control signals into XY2-100-
conformant signals and the scan system’s XY2-100
status signals into SL2-100-conformant signals (see
). This conversion supports the full function-
ality of i
DRIVE
®
technology on previous XY2-100-
based scan systems.
SL2-100-equipped scan systems can only be
controlled via an RTC
®
5 without a converter.