Introduction
There are a few pieces of test equipment available that could be used to test certain feedback devices, however, none of these devices are truly focused on alignment of the feedback to the motor like our equipment is designed to do. Manufacturer-specific drives may be used to test related feedbacks but you will find that they are not particularly helpful when it comes to aligning them, and you would have to purchase all the various manufacturer's equipment for each brand of motor you work on instead of one tester to do it all like the TI-5000JX.
Oscilloscope for Testing Resolvers and Incremental Encoders
Some old feedback devices can be tested and possibly even aligned with an oscilloscope. Alignment is accomplished by back-driving the motor and comparing the motor power signals to the feedback signals. However, probing these low and high voltage lines while the motor is spinning (dynamic alignment) and looking at data on an oscilloscope is error-prone and often dangerous. In addition, most modern serial feedback devices are not supported at all with an oscilloscope.
The TI-5000JX allows you to align incremental encoders and resolvers much more quickly and safely than using an oscilloscope. The TI-5000JX displays the angle of the feedback device while the motor is stationary (static alignment). You simply lock the motor with DC voltage and slowly adjust the feedback device until you reach the desired alignment angle in our software. Watch these videos on our Youtube Channel to see how quickly this can be done: https://www.youtube.com/c/MitchellElectronicsInc
Encoder Manufacturer-Specific Testers
Both the SICK PGT and Heidenhain PWM20/IK215 testers are good for testing their own encoders, but they are not so helpful for the process of aligning the feedback to the motor. In addition, they only support their own brand of feedbacks, while our testers support many brands.
The TI-5000JX is designed specially for alignment to the motor. It produces angles depending on the number of motor poles of the motor. The manufacturer testers only provide a position count which then requires the tech to do the math of figuring out how that count converts to angles. It is much easier to get a sense of feedback alignment when working with angles, and over time you will be less likely to make a mistake when working with various types of motors with different numbers of poles. We make the alignment process easy, and the same for all types of feedbacks and motors.
Memory Data Decoding
In addition to testing many different feedback brands on one device, one of the major advantages of the TI-5000JX is the ability to read, decrypt, and write the various motor manufacturer memory types within the encoder. The manufacturer-specific testers only display the memory contents in hexadecimal formatting (see pictures below). In comparison, the TI-5000JX actually decodes the memory data and reports it in a human readable format, displaying crucial information such as unique alignment of the feedback, motor type, nominal torque, max velocity, and much more. Using our method, a simple visual check can determine if anything has been corrupted. For motors that use checksums in their memory data, our tester verifies those checksums and the integrity of the data. If alignment data is stored you can easily read out two lockup angles for aligning the motor later. You can also save the data for later if you repair another motor just like it and need to replace the encoder!
TI-5000JX Memory Test
SICK Stegmann PGT Memory Test
Heidenhain PWM20 Memory Test
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