Windmill Software Ltd
Windows Engineering Software

How to Measure Torque

Home
Newsletters
Catalogue
Search

Torque Measurement using Windows Software

Windmill software lets you interface Torque Meters, gauges and wrenches with RS232 serial ports to a computer running Windows. Our Windmill COMIML software is very easy to use and you can try before you buy. Alternatively, subscribers to the Monitor newsletter (ISSN 1472-0221) can download an earlier version of the driver (LabIML) for free.

This page helps you get started with the free Windmill 4.3 and LabIML software. (Configuration is similar with COMIML, but you use the comDebug program instead of the ConfIML program). There are three basic steps.

1. Run the Windmill ConfIML program and enter your torque meter's communication settings.
2. Run the Windmill SetupIML program and choose names and units for your balance's data.
3. Run the Windmill DDE Panel, Logger or Chart program to save or display data from your balance.

After you have entered your configuration settings with ConfIML and SetupIML, you don't need to use these again and can go straight to the Windmill data logging and display programs, or other programs like Excel. More details on entering the configuration settings are below.

Before running the software connect your torque equipment to the PC's RS232 serial port using an appropriate cable. If your PC does not have a serial port you will need a USB-Serial converter.

Run the Windmill ConfIML program

This detects and saves a record of the equipemnet you want to use. You need to add the LabIML ASCII instrument handler and enter your instrument's communication settings. To do this

1. Press the Add button.
    
2. Select LabIML RS232 ASCII Instrument Handler.
    
3. Type a name for the torque meter and a description. The name and description can be anything you like. You will generally enter 1 as the number of channels. (Each channel holds one type of data item.) Press OK.
    
4. Enter your instrument's settings. These should work for most torque meters:
   • Reading Protocol: Request/Response On Demand
   • Timeout: 5000 mS
   • Data Persistance: 5000 mS
   • Returned Message Lenght: 16
   • Instrument Idle Time: 0
   • Instrument Initialisation String: Leave blank.
      
5. You now need to define how to extract data. To do this press the Channels button. Your settings here depend upon how you have configured your torque meter. Check your meter's Manual.
   • Make sure that Read channel is checked
   • Enter the engineering units in which your meter will send the data, eg Nm
   • You can ignore the maximum and minimum settings: these are just a guide for chart scaling etc.
   • Check your manual to find the format of your torque meter's data stream. An Omega torque meter, for example, sends a 16 character data stream. The 7th character gives the polarity (positive or negative) and the next 8 give the data values.
   • For the example above, in the ConfIML Reply Parse String enter: \I06\E08. This instructs Windmill to ignore the first 6 characters and to extract the next 9.
      
6. Enter the communication settings used by your torque meter, eg:
   • Baud: 4800
   • Data Bits: 8
   • Parity: None
   • Flow control: None
      
     Again, check your manual for your settings.
      
     
7. Save your settings and close ConfIML.

Now Run the Windmill SetupIML program

With the SetupIML program you can name units, set alarms and so on.

1. Choose to Create a New Setup and enter a name and description. This can be anything you like.
2. From the Device menu select LabIML.
3. Your data channel will be shown as a number like 10000. Double click this channel.
4. Type name for your channel and make sure Enable for Input is checked.
5. Save your settings in a *.ims file and close SetupIML.

Now open Windmill DDE Panel

1. From the File menu select Load Hardware Setup and choose the *.ims file you just saved.
2. Connect your torque channel. You should see your readings in DDE Panel.
3. Proceed similarly for the Logger and Chart programs.

Getting the data into Excel

You can use the Windmill Logger program to collect data, and after collection has finished import it into Excel. Alternatively, you can collect data with Excel in real-time by writing an Excel macro to read data from the Windmill DDE Panel. For more details see our Excel data acquisition page.

Trouble-Shooting

If you are unable to get data from your balance then right click the LabIML icon on the task bar and select "Debug Options". You should the raw torque data and Windmill extracting values.

If, in LabIML's Debug Options, you see data coming in but the message "Parsing Failed" you need to change your parse string in ConfIML.

If you are getting accurate data readings, but much slower than expected, change your sampling rate. With LabIML, Windmill can make 5 readings per second per channel. So it can record one measurement every 0.2 seconds. If you have the sampling interval set much smaller than this, then Windmill may slow down considerably and only make a couple of readings per minute.

Success?

Have you successfully used Windmill with your torque meter? Let us know about your project. If you have any problems then you can instead use this form to ask our advice

Details of how you are using Windmill:

Name:          
Organisation:  
E-mail: