Melles Griot Case Study

Modular Configuration Control System

Company Profile

Melles Griot supplies products that enable the practical application of light and is a worldwide manufacturer and distributor of optics, lasers, opto-mechanical hardware, and instruments. The company is a major OEM supplier, involved in the high-volume fabrication of both standard and custom optical components and advanced thin-film coatings, as well as optical tables, opto-mechanical hardware, and state-of-the-art flexure-based nanopositioning systems. The precision positioning equipment manufactured by Melles Griot is used in laboratories and production lines for general experimentation and as part of systems for optical fibre alignment.

Business Requirements

The company had a requirement for a modular system that would enable easy configuration control of their new hardware from a Windows-based PC. The control of their hardware needed to be from National Instrument LabView, or from Visual Basic and from a Macro language. The interface to the hardware was via a CANBus interface card and multi-drop CAN Cable.

Our Solution

Beacon developed a number of components for Melles Griot resulting in a complete solution for their requirements.

An ATL out-of-process server was developed to provide a COM component for each of their modules. The server communicated with the modules via a CANCard COM component. At Beacon, we have developed a number of CANCard components for different CANBus interface cards. The server then determined which modules were present on the CanBus.

The COM components were accessed via a set of DLL’s which validated the parameters to control the modules. DLL’s were used as the version of LabView could not access COM components.

We developed a Macro language in Visual Basic to allow simple loops and scripts to be written. This language was developed to enable sales people to demonstrate the system without needing to know LabView or Visual Basic.

Configuration tools and test tools were also developed to help in the setting up and testing of the system.

Originally, the system was developed to handle three types of modules but has since been expanded to handle seven types.