Control system for the NSTX lithium pellet injector

The lithium pellet injector (LPI) is being developed for the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). The LPI will inject 'pellets' of various composition into the plasma in order to study wall conditioning, edge impurity transport, liquid limiter simulations, and other areas of research. The control system for the NSTX LPI has incorporated widely used advanced technologies, such as LabVIEW/spl trade/ and PCI bus I/O boards, to create a low-cost control system which is fully integrated into the NSTX computing environment. This paper will present the hardware and software design of the computer control system for the LPI.