Zaber Stages

homing

The zaber stages should normally be powered off to avoid heating the instrument. The software remembers the state of stages between power cycles.

If you need to move a zaber stage, the first thing you need to do is power-on the stages. These are controlled from the “ninja” tab of pwrGUI. Most zaber stages are powered from stagezaber, remember that you need to power-on both pdu2.stagezaber and usbdu1.stagezaber. Once the stages are powered on, the software will connect automatically. You do not need to home every time they are powered on. Simply move the stage to where you want it and then power off.

It is best to power off a stage system from the pdu before powering off from the associated usbdu.

The stages do need to be homed periodically to acquire a reference position to ensure that positions are accurate. Currently we want to do this once per day. The labrules will issue a caution` when it has been more than 22 hours since the stages were last homed. To home the stages, first power them off. While you can home the individual stages one-by-one, there is a home_all request switch in the low-level process that will issue a home command to all the stages at once. For instance, for the main zaber system use cursesINDI to toggle zaberLowLevel.home_all.request. Once homing is complete, power-off.

Always power off as soon as you are done using the stages. If the zaber stages are powered-on for more than 10 minutes labrules will warn you.

control system

Zaber Stages are controlled by apps derived from the stdMotionStage implementation, meaning they share some common properties and options.