Patent ID: 8907750

Claim:
A mechanical impedance tuner with at least two probe carriages, where at least two of the carriages are initialized at fixed positions, the tuner comprising: a center conductor; at least two probe carriages mounted for movement along an axis parallel to the center conductor, and wherein no wall separates the at least two probe carriages, said at least two probe carriages including a first probe carriage and a second probe carriage; a carriage drive system connected to the at least two probe carriages for driving the at least two probe carriages along the axis in response to carriage drive signals, the carriage drive system including a first drive motor for driving the first probe carriage along the axis and a second drive motor for driving the second probe carriage along the axis; and a controller for controlling operation of the carriage drive system during an initialization process, the controller configured to drive the first drive motor to position the first carriage at a first fixed initialization position by executing a first algorithm, and to drive the second drive motor to position the second carriage at a second fixed initialization position by executing a second algorithm, said second fixed initialization position being independent of the first carriage at said first initialization position, the controller further configured to store zero or home positions for the first and second motors corresponding to the first and second initialization positions, respectively.