Development Of A Virtual Instrument For Leather Performance Testing

Up to now, the testing of leather performance is mainly carried outby sensing, i.e. visual inspection and feeling. Try to overcoming thisshortcoming, a virtual instrument for measuring such leather performanceas compression, tension, and bending, has been developed, which consistsof the motion control system and the system for data sampling andprocessing.The hardware of the motion control system includes a motioncontrol card-NI PCI-7340, a data acquisition card-NI PCI-6220; stepmotor-42M-0.9D, a motor driver-Leetro DMD402A, a displacementplatform-TSA-300B-G. The corresponding application program has beendeveloped with LABVIEW, which sends the signals for motor controlling,including, motion direction, pulse number, and pulse frequency, etc. aforce transducer is mounted on the displacement platform, which isdriven by the stepper motor.The hardware of the data sampling and processing system iscomposed of an industrial PC, a data acquisition card-NI PCI-6220, aforce transducer,-MS-1, a grating sensor-JCXE-DF, while thecorresponding software has also been developed with LABVIEW, whosefunction include detecting the displacement of detector and the forcebetween the detector and the leather under the occasions of leathercompressing, leather tension, and leather bending respectively, and alsoincluding calculating performance of leather under the three occasionabove.The experiments have proceeded with several leather samples, andthe results indicate that the function of the instrument has been realized.These experiments also show the merits of application of virtualtechnology to leather testing, especially its convenience for field testing.