“One network for all” is the motto of this year’s Ethernet POWERLINK Standardization Group (EPSG) exhibit at the SPS IPC Drives show in Nuremberg, Germany, being held November 26–28, 2013. The demo installations at the EPSG booth (6-114/6-115) cover all aspects of future-oriented machine automation and underscore the top positions held by POWERLINK and openSAFETY as standards for industrial real-time communication and integrated safety technology.
“At the 2013 SPS IPC Drives show, anyone can see by the densely populated multi-vendor wall at the EPSG booth that POWERLINK ranks at the top of the list of real-time communication systems“, says Stefan Schönegger, managing director of the EPSG. “Every day, the number of new POWERLINK-compatible products is growing across all automation segments.”
One network for all
More than 3,000 OEMs are already placing their trust in this advanced real-time network for field devices. Deciding on POWERLINK is easy: The protocol features hard real-time properties at a high communication bandwidth, facilitating for instance high-precision axis synchronization in parallel with video signal transmission over the same lines. On top of this, fully integrated safety solutions can be created using openSAFETY. Protective field functions of light grids, for instance, can be adapted to the requirements at hand without manual interaction. This high degree of integration greatly reduces wiring within machines.
Due to its compliance with the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, POWERLINK can be used on any Ethernet infrastructure. In addition, both POWERLINK and openSAFETY are available as open-source software, so they are truly vendor-independent.
[info] www.ethernet-powerlink.org/en/ [/info]