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The drive system; position encoding

Each axis of the telescope has a main power amplifier which is connected to the drive motor. Each axis also has a second amplifier and motor which counteracts the effects of backlash.

The position of each axis is measured by an optical disc encoder which is attached to a shaft carrying the worm gear, drive motor and flywheel. The flywheels stop lockup in the gears. The encoder gives out a train of pulses which are counted (up or down) by a Hytec CAMAC module. There is one module for each axis.

Every tenth of a second, a strobe pulse comes from the time service and goes into the Hytec modules. This strobe causes a fresh copy of where the telescope is positioned to be copied into a register which in turn is readable by the computer.

This same strobe pulse goes into the computer which is interrupted from what it is doing and goes to look at the encoder position. The encoder position is compared with where the computer calculates that the telescope ought to be and it then applies a correction, as necessary, to the demanded drive voltages on the servo amplifiers. This procedure involves a CAMAC module which does a digital to analogue conversion. (DAC module). The voltage from the DAC is applied to the preamplifiers which in turn drive the main "Inland" power amplifiers.

There are circles on the telescope to help you get within a fraction of a degree if necessary while in engineering mode.


next up previous contents
Next: Alarms and status lights Up: About the telescope Previous: Computer mode

1999-11-12