Apex Digital 5708009-C manual Understanding Pulsing, Enabling and Setting Pulsing

Advanced Energy®

This section of the manual provides information for the:

Pulsing option

PIN position 14, (A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17) option 1. (When identifying the PIN position, remember that the A at the beginning of the PIN is not counted as a position. The PIN option is the number or letter you should look for in the specified position.)

For more information about the PIN and for a complete list of how PIN positions correspond to Apex product options, see Table 1-1. on page 1-4.

For units that have the pulsing option, pulsing output can be enabled or disabled. All pulsing settings are made only through the AE Bus Host port. If you are using Virtual Front Panel, see the Virtual Front Panel User Manual for an explanation of making these settings. If you are not using Virtual Front Panel, see “Host Port—RS-232 With AE Bus” on page 4-37 for information about communicating through the Host port and for the commands that control pulsing.

Understanding Pulsing

When pulsing is enabled, the Apex generates pulses of RF output based on frequency and duty-cycle settings.

•The frequency defines the length of pulsing cycles, that is, the amount of time between each RF-on event. Valid frequencies are between 150 Hz and 50,000 Hz.

•The duty cycle sets the percentage of each pulsing cycle for which output is on. Values can be set from 10 to 90 percent. For example, if you set the duty cycle percentage to 15 percent, then during each pulsing cycle, output will be on 15 percent of the time and off 85 percent of the time.

Note: Pulsing settings can not be changed when RF output is on. You must turn output off before changing any pulsing settings.

Enabling and Setting Pulsing

To enable pulsing, send a valid set of frequency and duty cycle settings to the Apex generator (see Host port commands 93 and 96 in Table 4-6. on page 4-45). Sending an invalid combination of settings disables pulsing. Host port commands 193 and 196 read back these pulsing settings.

Pulsing settings are not saved when the Apex unit is turned off. To return pulsing settings to default, cycle power to the Apex unit.

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