For three days, the SPS show­cases the latest products, solu­tions and in­nov­a­tions, al­low­ing vis­it­ors to im­merse them­selves in the fast-paced world of auto­ma­tion. In a total of 16 ex­hib­i­tion halls cov­er­ing 125,000 square metres, around 1,200 com­pan­ies from the in­dustry will be rep­res­en­ted. In­ter­na­tion­al key play­ers in the auto­ma­tion in­dustry such as Bosch Rexroth AG, Siemens AG, Rock­well Auto­ma­tion GmbH, Mit­subishi Elec­tric Europe B.V., YASKAWA Europe, Ad­vantech Europe B.V., ABB AG, ig­us GmbH, STMi­cro­elec­tron­ics In­ter­na­tion­al NV, Con­trinex Sensor GmbH, Ex­or In­ter­na­tion­al S.p.A. and Mi­cro­chip Tech­no­logy Ire­land Lim­ited will re­turn this year. However, the show also at­tracts many new­comers ex­hib­it­ing at SPS for the first time.

Ac­cord­ing to last year's fig­ures, 13,851 (or 28%) of the 50,081 vis­it­ors came from out­side Ger­many. Due to the wide range of products offered by auto­ma­tion sup­pli­ers and its highly spe­cial­ised nature, SPS is widely re­garded as a must-at­tend event.

Product show­cases and live demon­stra­tions

Vis­it­ors from all over the world will be able to find out about the latest trends and products, listen to ex­pert present­a­tions and pan­el dis­cus­sions, and see live demon­stra­tions at the four ex­hib­i­tion for­ums in Halls 1, 3, 6 and 8. The pro­gramme of the Tech­no­logy Stage, the for­um in Hall 3, presen­ted by the Ger­man Ma­chinery and Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­ation (VDMA) and the Ger­man Elec­tro and Di­git­al In­dustry As­so­ci­ation (ZVEI), will also be broad­cast live via the com­ple­ment­ary di­git­al plat­form "SPS on air" and will be avail­able in Ger­man and Eng­lish. The main top­ics for 2024 are

• Di­git­al trans­form­a­tion
• In­dus­tri­al com­mu­nic­a­tions
• Safety and se­cur­ity
• Data spaces
• Data driv­en and in­tel­li­gent con­cepts for con­trol and visu­al­iz­a­tion
• Sensor in­nov­a­tions
• Drives
• Sus­tain­ab­il­ity 
• AI in auto­ma­tion
   

Joint stands  

With around 20 ex­hib­it­ors, the long-es­tab­lished “Auto­ma­tion meets IT” joint stand in Hall 6 will of­fer vis­it­ors com­pre­hens­ive in­sights in­to this sub­ject as well as the op­por­tun­ity to re­ceive in­di­vidu­al ad­vice from sup­pli­ers.

The joint stand will fo­cus on the fol­low­ing spe­cial­ist areas: 

• IT man­age­ment for man­u­fac­tur­ing 
• Cloud and edge-based solu­tions and ser­vices
• Se­cur­ity meas­ures for man­u­fac­tur­ing
• IoT and AI-based solu­tions
• Open source

Vis­it­ors can find out about new and im­proved products, pro­cesses and ser­vices from young, in­nov­at­ive Ger­man com­pan­ies at the "young IN­NOV­AT­ORS" stand in Hall 8, which is sponsored by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics and Tech­no­logy. An ad­di­tion­al "Start-up Area" will also be loc­ated in this hall, where vis­it­ors can dis­cov­er even more in­nov­a­tions from in­ter­na­tion­al new­comers to the auto­ma­tion in­dustry. 
 

Pep­perl+Fuchs has joined the ctrlX World part­ner net­work from Bosch Rexroth. The part­ner net­work ex­pands the range of solu­tions for the mod­u­lar auto­ma­tion sys­tem ctrlX AUTO­MA­TION with hard­ware com­pat­ible with the Linux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem ctrlX OS. As a ctrlX World part­ner, Pep­perl+Fuchs will con­trib­ute se­lec­ted products to the ctrlX OS eco­sys­tem.

Sup­port of open ar­chi­tec­ture

As a glob­al tech­no­logy lead­er in auto­ma­tion and a driver of II­oT projects, Pep­perl+Fuchs has al­ways em­braced open sys­tems and stand­ard­ised in­ter­faces. "Fu­ture-proof auto­ma­tion can only suc­ceed if we move away from pro­pri­et­ary man­u­fac­turer stand­ards even more than be­fore and re­move the bar­ri­ers between sys­tem levels," em­phas­izes Se­basti­an Stöber, Vice Pres­id­ent Busi­ness Unit Sys­tems at Pep­perl+Fuchs. "As part of our long-stand­ing col­lab­or­a­tion with Bosch Rexroth, we wel­come the open ar­chi­tec­ture concept of ctrlX OS and are pleased to sup­port this prom­ising ini­ti­at­ive with our products and solu­tions."

ctrlX OS is a real-time-cap­able, Linux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem from Bosch Rexroth that can be used from the field level to edge devices and the cloud. This sys­tem soft­ware can be used in­de­pend­ently of the con­trol hard­ware. Users be­ne­fit from con­sist­ently open stand­ards, app pro­gram­ming tech­no­logy, web-based en­gin­eer­ing and a com­pre­hens­ive IoT con­nec­tion.
 

Vir­tu­al con­trol­lers and devices are a per­fect ex­ample of the IT/OT con­ver­gence which plays a de­cis­ive role for PROFINET in auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy. With the tech­nic­al ad­vance­ments be­ing made in vir­tu­al­iz­a­tion tech­no­logy and the grow­ing de­mand for vir­tu­al con­trol­lers and devices, PROFIB­US & PROFINET In­ter­na­tion­al (PI) has ad­ap­ted the PROFINET cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cess ac­cord­ingly and reached an im­port­ant mile­stone with the PROFINET Test Bundle V2.45.0 re­leased in Au­gust of 2024. 
Vir­tu­al con­trol­ler and device in­stances can be of­fi­cially tested and cer­ti­fied ef­fect­ive im­me­di­ately. PROFIsafe can also be used in a vir­tu­al con­text as already con­firmed by TÜV Süd with a let­ter of con­form­ance.

Easy scale up

Vir­tu­al­ized PROFINET devices of­fer the user a num­ber of ad­vant­ages, for ex­ample with re­gard to flex­ib­il­ity and scalab­il­ity, high per­form­ance and easy in­teg­ra­tion. Thus, vir­tu­al­ized PROFINET devices run on stand­ard hard­ware and in vir­tu­al­ized en­vir­on­ments, which en­ables easy scal­ing and ad­apt­a­tion to dif­fer­ent re­quire­ments. This re­duces the need for spe­cial hard­ware and de­creases the over­all costs for com­pan­ies.

Thanks to seam­less in­teg­ra­tion in­to ex­ist­ing IT in­fra­struc­ture, vir­tu­al con­trol­lers boast high per­form­ance and re­li­ab­il­ity. They use TCP/IP and IT stand­ards to en­sure stable and ef­fi­cient com­mu­nic­a­tion between the devices on a net­work. Through cor­res­pond­ing re­source man­age­ment, mul­tiple con­trol­ler and device in­stances can be op­er­ated at the same time on a single piece of hard­ware.
 

These freedoms also come along with chal­lenges with re­gard to guar­an­tee­ing the ex­pec­ted qual­ity and re­li­ab­il­ity of PROFINET devices. Im­port­ant as­pects here in­clude:

• Runtime and com­mu­nic­a­tion be­ha­vi­or can be sig­ni­fic­antly in­flu­enced by the vir­tu­al en­vir­on­ment and trans­port net­work.
• The trans­port net­work con­sid­er­ably af­fects the jit­ter of PROFINET com­mu­nic­a­tion.
• Vir­tu­al­iz­a­tion and the trans­port net­work are not fully un­der the con­trol of the vir­tu­al in­stance pro­vider.

To en­sure the ex­pec­ted high level of qual­ity in the form of in­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity and avail­ab­il­ity des­pite this vari­ance, the cer­ti­fic­a­tion ap­proach for vir­tu­al PROFINET in­stances was di­vided in­to two steps: In the first step, the PROFINET test labor­at­ory con­ducts a test based on a simple ex­ample con­fig­ur­a­tion of the vir­tu­al PROFINET in­stance. The op­tion­ally im­ple­men­ted and oblig­a­tory func­tions are tested based on the cor­res­pond­ing con­form­ance class here. Fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion, a cer­ti­fic­ate list­ing the ref­er­ence hard­ware used at the test labor­at­ory, the vir­tu­al­iz­a­tion tech­no­logy and the guar­an­teed re­sources can be ap­plied for.

In the second step, im­ple­ment­a­tion of the spe­cif­ic in­stance is tested on the ac­tu­al phys­ic­al sys­tem. For this pur­pose, a tool is be­ing de­veloped which must be used on site by the cus­tom­er to test the per­form­ance of the trans­port net­work and the re­quire­ments re­gard­ing the time be­ha­vi­or (latency and jit­ter, among oth­er things) and the net­work load. 

Vir­tu­al­iz­a­tion tech­no­logy will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op and come along with new re­quire­ments to be in­cluded in the spe­cific­a­tions and cer­ti­fic­a­tion tests. PI will con­tin­ue to com­pet­ently ac­com­pany this pro­cess.
 

Siemens has signed an agree­ment to ac­quire Altair En­gin­eer­ing Inc., a lead­ing pro­vider of soft­ware in the in­dus­tri­al sim­u­la­tion and ana­lys­is mar­ket. Altair share­hold­ers will re­ceive USD 113 per share, rep­res­ent­ing an en­ter­prise value of ap­prox­im­ately USD 10 bil­lion. The of­fer price rep­res­ents a 19% premi­um to Altair's un­af­fected clos­ing price on Oc­to­ber 21, 2024, the last trad­ing day pri­or to me­dia re­ports re­gard­ing a pos­sible trans­ac­tion. With this ac­quis­i­tion Siemens strengthens its po­s­i­tion as a lead­ing tech­no­logy com­pany and its lead­er­ship in in­dus­tri­al soft­ware.

“Ac­quir­ing Altair marks a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone for Siemens. This stra­tegic in­vest­ment aligns with our com­mit­ment to ac­cel­er­ate the di­git­al and sus­tain­ab­il­ity trans­form­a­tions of our cus­tom­ers by com­bin­ing the real and di­git­al worlds. The ad­di­tion of Altair’s cap­ab­il­it­ies in sim­u­la­tion, high per­form­ance com­put­ing, data sci­ence, and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to­geth­er with Siemens Xcel­er­at­or will cre­ate the world's most com­plete AI-powered design and sim­u­la­tion port­fo­lio,” said Ro­land Busch, Pres­id­ent and CEO of Siemens AG. “It is a lo­gic­al next step: we have been build­ing our lead­er­ship in in­dus­tri­al soft­ware for the last 15 years, most re­cently, demo­crat­iz­ing the be­ne­fits of data and AI for en­tire in­dus­tries.”

“This ac­quis­i­tion rep­res­ents the cul­min­a­tion of nearly 40 years in which Altair has grown from a star­tup in De­troit to a world-class soft­ware and tech­no­logy com­pany. We have ad­ded thou­sands of cus­tom­ers glob­ally in man­u­fac­tur­ing, life sci­ences, en­ergy and fin­an­cial ser­vices, and built an amaz­ing work­force, and in­nov­at­ive cul­ture,” said James Scapa, Altair’s founder and CEO. “We be­lieve this com­bin­a­tion of two strongly com­ple­ment­ary lead­ers in the en­gin­eer­ing soft­ware space brings to­geth­er Altair’s broad port­fo­lio in sim­u­la­tion, data sci­ence, and HPC with Siemens’ strong po­s­i­tion in mech­an­ic­al and EDA design. Siemens’ out­stand­ing tech­no­logy, stra­tegic cus­tom­er re­la­tion­ships, and hon­est, tech­nic­al cul­ture is an ex­cel­lent fit for Altair to con­tin­ue its jour­ney driv­ing in­nov­a­tion with com­pu­ta­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.”

By adding Altair’s highly com­ple­ment­ary sim­u­la­tion port­fo­lio, with strength in mech­an­ic­al and elec­tro­mag­net­ic cap­ab­il­it­ies, we are en­han­cing our com­pre­hens­ive Di­git­al Twin to de­liv­er a full-suite, phys­ics-based, sim­u­la­tion port­fo­lio as part of Siemens Xcel­er­at­or. Altair's data sci­ence and AI-powered sim­u­la­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies al­low any­one, from en­gin­eers to gen­er­al­ists, to ac­cess sim­u­la­tion ex­pert­ise to de­crease time-to-mar­ket and ac­cel­er­ate design it­er­a­tions. Ad­di­tion­ally, Altair's data sci­ence cap­ab­il­it­ies will un­lock Siemens' in­dus­tri­al do­main ex­pert­ise in product li­fe­cycle and man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cesses.

About:

Altair En­gin­eer­ing is a glob­al lead­er in com­pu­ta­tion­al sci­ence and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) that provides soft­ware and cloud solu­tions in Sim­u­la­tion and Ana­lys­is, Data Sci­ence and AI, and High-Per­form­ance Com­put­ing, en­abling or­gan­iz­a­tions across all in­dus­tries to com­pete more ef­fect­ively and drive smarter de­cisions in an in­creas­ingly con­nec­ted world. Foun­ded in 1985, Altair En­gin­eer­ing Inc. went pub­lic in 2017 (Nas­daq) and is headquartered in Troy, Michigan (USA). Out of its more than 3,500 em­ploy­ees, ap­prox­im­ately 1,400 em­ploy­ees work in R&D.
 

Takayuki Ito of Fanuc Corporation, who previously held the position of Vice President, succeeds Marina Bill of ABB who has served the rotating post since 2022. "I am proud to continue the work of my predecessor, Marina Bill, who has been a great ambassador for the world of robotics. We are witnessing rapid change in the automation of industrial and service sectors around the world. Together with Jane Heffner of Mobile Industrial Robots as the new Vice President of the IFR, I look forward to our mission," said Takayuki Ito.

More than 40 years of experience in robotics

Takayuki Ito has a track record of more than 40 years in the robotics industry. He currently holds the position of Chief Technical Advisor at the Japanese robot manufacturer Fanuc Corporation based in Oshino, Japan. Since 1981, Takayuki Ito has worked at the Japanese robot manufacturer in various positions: In 1997, he became Executive Vice President for Fanuc Robotics in North America. He returned to the Fanuc headquarters in Japan in 2002, taking on the role of General Manager for the Robot Technology Center.

New Vice President Jane Heffner

The IFR’s new Vice President, Jane Heffner, has more than 20 years of experience in technology-driven industries, including automation, robotics, automotive, and aerospace. She currently serves as Vice President Global Sales at Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), a leading manufacturer of autonomous mobile robots. In this role, based in Detroit, Heffner oversees the company’s global sales strategy and execution. Before joining MiR, Heffner held leadership roles at ABB Robotics and other major industrial companies.

IEN Europe: What ma­jor trends do you fore­see emer­ging in the in­dus­tri­al equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor over the next 5-10 years? How do you an­ti­cip­ate these trends will shape your com­pany’s strategy?
Rick de Vries: There are some ma­jor trends we can see. Typ­ic­ally, stand­ard trends in ma­chine build­ing are flex­ib­il­ity, re­li­ab­il­ity, product speed and con­nectiv­ity. Ma­chine build­ers al­ways in­vest­ig­ate these areas. We have also no­ticed a fo­cus on the ne­ces­sity to de­vel­op the pro­cesses of cir­cu­lar eco­nomy in­dus­tries. 

But the big trend truly is vir­tu­al­isa­tion. We’re of­ten asked, “How can I change my auto­ma­tion pro­cesses and in­teg­rate vir­tu­al plat­forms?” or “What be­ne­fit does a di­git­al twin bring to a loc­al ma­chine; and how do I ob­tain a com­pre­hens­ive di­git­al twin in the first place?” Those are im­port­ant ques­tions for man­u­fac­tur­ers, be­cause PC-based con­trols are in­creas­ingly re­pla­cing clas­sic­al PLC con­trolled pro­cesses.

However, what also needs to be con­sidered is something that’s been over­looked by cur­rent trends: the Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act (CRA), which is com­ing up in 2027. A lot of ma­chine build­ers do not re­cog­nise the ne­ces­sity and the chal­lenges it may give them re­gard­ing their ma­chines. In re­sponse to this, Ad­vantech is ex­pand­ing its part­ner eco­sys­tem. On top of our ex­ist­ing eco­sys­tem, which is already ex­tens­ive, we are build­ing an eco­sys­tem for brown­field cus­tom­ers. We have de­veloped a com­plete solu­tion with two ma­jor tech­no­logy play­ers in the se­cur­ity area, so cus­tom­ers can eas­ily plug in and se­cure their ma­chines to ful­fil the re­quire­ments of the CRA. We are also adding tech­no­lo­gies to our hard­ware designs and cus­tom­er designs that will help ful­fil the re­quire­ments, as well as prove this is be­ing done.

This is a big chal­lenge. But Ad­vantech is push­ing for­ward be­cause we put a lot of en­ergy in­to plat­form solu­tions. Our part­ner­ships are a great ex­ample, like the one we have with VM­ware. They’re a part of the jour­ney to help cus­tom­ers re­duce cost, raise ef­fi­ciency, and de­ploy ser­vices, be­cause you need a net­work of dif­fer­ent ex­perts in today’s mar­ket. These are the key trends we’re put­ting a lot of ef­fort in­to.

IEN Europe: Next up is a ques­tion re­gard­ing se­cur­ity. Over the past few months, we have seen that a lot of Ger­man com­pan­ies are neither fa­mil­i­ar with the NIS2 re­quire­ments, nor what they have to do about them. How do you see the situ­ation, and can you help your cus­tom­ers?
Rick de Vries: This is also something we’ve no­ticed. Com­pan­ies don’t read­ily see how they are af­fected. It is a big pro­cess, and we’re act­ing on it. One side of the story is how we handle our in­tern­al cy­ber­se­cur­ity re­si­li­ence pro­cesses. The oth­er is the de­vel­op­ment of our hard­ware, and the firm­ware we have in our sys­tems today. It’s also im­port­ant to avoid any vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies, and this is the same with com­pon­ents we buy that have firm­ware in­side. We al­ways must ask ourselves where the vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies are.

We are build­ing a sys­tem with­in Ad­vantech so that we can eas­ily re­port data to our cus­tom­ers and part­ners. Mak­ing the soft­ware we de­vel­op cy­ber re­si­li­ent is part of this pro­cess, as well as that of our eco-part­ners. There is also a new law cur­rently be­ing pro­cessed re­lat­ing to the use of AI, so we’re look­ing in­to the leg­al­ity of that as well. There are al­ways two stor­ies. One is how we’d ap­ply the use of AI, but we also must ask ourselves about AI too. We ask ques­tions like; “What are the ef­fects?” and “What do we need to do to make sure that we harden the hard­ware and firm­ware that uses AI?”

We do a lot to make ourselves ready for the mar­ket. But we also ad­vise, and we have part­ners who really can go deep in­to the pro­cesses we’ve already spoken about. For ex­ample, we're work­ing very closely with Se­cur­itas for the Cy­ber Re­si­li­ence Act. We will also present this top­ic at the SPS show in Nurem­berg along­side a part­ner. We’re ready for the dis­cus­sion to take place; we’re there for our cus­tom­ers, and we’re ready to con­sult them on how to make ma­chines res­ult­ant.

IEN Europe: An­oth­er big trend that you haven't men­tioned so far, which is very im­port­ant, is how to make man­u­fac­tur­ing sus­tain­able. How is your vis­ion in­flu­enced by reg­u­la­tions such as the EU Green Deal, and how do your cus­tom­ers be­ne­fit from your ef­forts?
Rick de Vries: As we are not build­ing whole ma­chines, we are al­ways aware that we’re just one part of the puzzle. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity, car­bon foot­prints and the whole ESG jour­ney in­volve vari­ous pro­cesses for all com­pan­ies, in­clud­ing ours. We have es­tab­lished a com­pre­hens­ive emis­sions pro­cess and in­teg­rated car­bon ini­ti­at­ives in­to our designs. At SPS, we will demon­strate a 45% re­duc­tion in our car­bon foot­print, re­flect­ing our com­mit­ment to min­im­ising car­bon im­pacts in both our com­pon­ents and pro­cesses. But that also must fit in­to the jour­ney of our cus­tom­ers. Li­fe­cycle man­age­ment, for ex­ample, is an im­port­ant part of sus­tain­ab­il­ity. The longer you can use your product ef­fi­ciently and safely, the bet­ter it is, but you also need part­ners that can work on re­fur­bish­ments or up­grades. And that is an ad­vant­age in philo­sophy we have already had for many years with our mod­u­lar concept.

What does that mean for our cus­tom­ers? Well, say that I have a CPU, but I want to have a big­ger one. We could cer­tainly up­grade it. But if I wanted more memory, or an­oth­er drive, I’d need to change my WiFi 3 to WiFi 6. However, in­stead of hav­ing to re­place everything with a new product, we could in­stead plug in a new board set. This is the kind of ex­ten­ded func­tion­al­ity we are aim­ing for, and many cus­tom­ers want that on their ma­chines.

So, how can we help them em­brace vir­tu­al­isa­tion and add com­put­ing power to of­f­load pro­cesses, without tak­ing everything out of their ma­chine and re­pla­cing en­tire sys­tems? An im­port­ant part of it all is that Ad­vantech designs everything us­ing stand­ards. An ex­ample is IPCs – we use IEEE stand­ards. We’ve demon­strated that well in the semi­con­duct­ors in­dustry, for ex­ample.

But what does that design concept mean for the cus­tom­er, you might ask? Well, a hy­po­thet­ic­al cus­tom­er could buy a chassis and add it to his ma­chine. There may be an old-fash­ioned mother­board in­side, but they could just take it out and re­place it with a new mother­board. They wouldn’t have to re­new the chassis, and everything else would still fit. The only part our cus­tom­er would have to change would be the mother­board, avoid­ing waste while still be­ing able to re­new their CPU. This hy­po­thet­ic­al scen­ario is what our philo­sophy is all about when it comes to cir­cu­lar in­dustry and sus­tain­ab­il­ity.

IEN Europe: But if the products live longer, doesn’t that also mean the soft­ware has to be kept up to date for longer as well?
Rick de Vries: Yes, it does. The soft­ware, the OS, the firm­ware, but not only these. We se­lect part­ners for com­pon­ents, such as CPUs and GPUs, with that in mind, so that we can choose the right com­pon­ents with the sup­port for sus­tain­ab­il­ity. But there are con­stantly new top­ics com­ing up, and you have to ask; “How do I harden my old hard­ware for that?” Our part­ners would tell us something like; “You can’t harden the old hard­ware any­more. And you can’t go in­to the hard­ware to make changes.” But what we can do is cre­ate a plu­gin so that part of the hard­ware is hardened again and is now con­trolled by a plu­gin solu­tion. And it works!

IEN Europe: What role does di­git­al trans­form­a­tion and In­dustry 4.0 play in the in­dus­tri­al equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing in­dustry? How is Ad­vantech ad­apt­ing to this trans­form­a­tion?
Rick de Vries: That’s also one of the biggest chal­lenges we see in our cus­tom­er base. There’s a lot of know­ledge dis­ap­pear­ing, as well as in­creas­ing la­bour chal­lenges. We’re find­ing ourselves be­com­ing con­sult­ants more of­ten, in­stead of be­ing asked to simply make and de­liv­er products. But we can’t do that alone. We have seen in the past that there are so many sub-ele­ments in a pro­cess, just like what you said with Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence. We need the eco­sys­tem I men­tioned earli­er, and we’re build­ing one to get all the ne­ces­sary sup­port, pro­cesses, and know­ledge to­geth­er to sup­port our ma­chine build­ers in their jour­ney, be­cause they’ve also real­ised, they just can’t do it them­selves.

Ad­vantech takes the lead by es­tab­lish­ing a part­ner­ship pro­gramme, it helps our cus­tom­ers un­der­stand that we are a sup­pli­er, and our part­ners help us find solu­tions. We cre­ate, in this sense, com­pet­ency. We train our cus­tom­ers to know how to use this kind of tech­no­logy.

Of course, we have a strong part­ner­ship with in­nov­a­tion part­ners in the chip­set tech­no­logy world. They also bring a lot of know­ledge in­to our com­pany to help train us. It helps us un­der­stand what we can do with tech­no­logy, and how we can op­tim­ise pro­cesses and make new in­nov­a­tions and solu­tions on the plat­form that cus­tom­ers are look­ing for. We do find ourselves be­ing asked to or­gan­ise work­shops for our cus­tom­ers, es­pe­cially for ma­chine build­ers, re­gard­ing hard­ware philo­sophy. They want to un­der­stand the ESG jour­ney and come up with ideas to cut costs and cre­ate new ma­chine to­po­lo­gies. As you can see, even though we used to just be a hard­ware seller, we are slowly find­ing ourselves in an ad­vis­ory po­s­i­tion for the whole pro­cess.

That means we’re in a peri­od of trans­ition, and we need to be able to provide our cus­tom­ers with the right know­ledge that ap­plies to their spe­cif­ic situ­ation, chal­lenge sand is­sues. We’ve also no­ticed that con­sultat­ive selling changes re­la­tion­ships. In­stead of just hav­ing the typ­ic­al sup­pli­er-cus­tom­er re­la­tion­ship, we’re find­ing ourselves with much more trust­ing part­ner­ships.

IEN Europe: So, after cre­at­ing this net­work, how many part­ners do you cur­rently have for tack­ling these dif­fer­ent prob­lems?
Rick de Vries: We already have more than 250 part­ner­ships, and I’m only talk­ing about our European eco­sys­tem of the In­dus­tri­al IoT di­vi­sion group – not the wider Ad­vantech Europe group! We can split the eco­sys­tem in­to key part­ner­ships, like In­tel, Mi­crosoft, CODESYS, and oth­er soft­ware and hard­ware-re­lated tech­no­logy part­ners for our biggest en­deav­ours. But we also have the ISVs (in­de­pend­ent soft­ware vendors) as well as the sys­tem in­teg­rat­ors. We need these part­ners be­cause we train to­geth­er, which in turn gets the product to bet­ter fit the mar­ket. They help us identi­fy cur­rent chal­lenges in the mar­ket, and push us to find the rel­ev­ant solu­tion. And that’s really start­ing to work well.

That’s also the flip side of the story. In­stead of re­ly­ing solely on our own sales or­gan­isa­tion, we have a net­work of eco­sys­tem part­ners who act as our am­bas­sad­ors and drive sales as well. Of course, we still have the tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nel, but we're work­ing more and more with the eco­sys­tem part­ners, the sys­tem in­teg­rat­or part­ners and the con­sultancy part­ners, like OBS Or­ange Busi­ness Ser­vices for ex­ample. Ad­vantech is head­ing in that dir­ec­tion when, pre­vi­ously, only big play­ers like Siemens were.

As a busi­ness, we’re grow­ing in en­tirely new ways. This is be­cause we now have the right part­ners to step in­to the world with us, a world that they know; we have the tech­no­logy, but they have the know­ledge to pitch it in the right way. That's the jour­ney we are in. By fo­cus­ing both on our ver­tic­als and our sec­tor, you learn bet­ter, and with an eco­sys­tem, you can ob­tain a much bet­ter ap­proach for both sales and solu­tions.

It's a slow trend change. But you also see that part­ners, cus­tom­ers, and ma­chine build­ers are mov­ing in that dir­ec­tion. It can be dif­fi­cult for them, be­cause in the past, they did everything them­selves, and now they must re­lin­quish con­trol and learn how to trust the sup­pli­er and hard­ware man­u­fac­turer to provide an IoT solu­tion that will bring them to the next level of in­nov­a­tion for their ma­chines. It's a learn­ing curve for all parties in­volved.

IEN Europe: Thank you for your in­sights!
 

These new Horner Auto­ma­tion of­fer­ings can em­power busi­nesses with more ro­bust, scal­able, and in­tel­li­gent auto­ma­tion solu­tions. At the fore­front of Horner’s latest re­leases is the Can­vas Series HMI + PLC Con­trol­lers, an all-in-one solu­tion de­signed for great­er flex­ib­il­ity and scalab­il­ity. These next-gen­er­a­tion con­trol­lers bring to­geth­er PLC, HMI, I/O, and net­work­ing in­to a single, co­hes­ive unit, much like Horner’s es­tab­lished OCS con­trol­lers, but with en­hanced fea­tures that cater to mod­ern in­dus­tri­al needs.

Key fea­tures of the Can­vas Series in­clude:

• All-in-One Con­trol with Vi­brant Touch­screen Dis­plays: Per­forms all ma­chine func­tions in a uni­fied hard­ware design; lo­gic con­trol, op­er­at­or in­ter­face, I/O and net­work­ing. Design mod­ern and re­spons­ive ma­chine con­trol dash­boards.
• All New Graph­ics Ob­jects: De­signed from the ground up with all-new graph­ics. Trend­ing, re­cipes, alarms - all re­designed with a mod­ern look and fully fea­tured.
• Ad­vanced Con­nectiv­ity: Fast and flex­ible Eth­er­net with Eth­er­net IP, Mod­bus TCP/UDP, BACnet IP; FTP file trans­fer and Email.
• Ex­pan­sion with I/O: With fully in­teg­rated hard­ware and soft­ware, Can­vas of­fers easi­er pro­gram­ming, in­stall­a­tion and set-up than a sep­ar­ate PLC and HMI in a smal­ler foot­print. Does your sys­tem re­quire a lot of I/O? Can­vas is not lim­ited to on-board I/O only. Eas­ily ex­pand your I/O sys­tem us­ing OCS-I/O, our in­nov­at­ive new Horner I/O sys­tem.
• Horner WebMI+: al­lows re­mote mon­it­or­ing and con­trol of Horner OCS con­trol­lers via any web browser, us­ing HTML5 tech­no­logy for seam­less ac­cess across devices. It provides real-time in­sights and con­trol with se­cure, user-friendly in­ter­faces, mak­ing it ideal for in­dus­tries need­ing ef­fi­cient re­mote man­age­ment of auto­ma­tion sys­tems.
• Built-In II­oT Func­tion­al­ity: Push data to the cloud with MQTT. Re­motely mon­it­or and con­trol the ma­chine with WebMI+ from a web browser. No ex­tra li­censes re­quired! Can­vas is also pre-con­figured to sup­port Horner’s up­com­ing OCS360 Cloud Ser­vice.
   

Cscape 10: En­hanced Soft­ware for Op­tim­ized Per­form­ance

In con­junc­tion with the re­lease of the Can­vas Series, Horner has also in­tro­duced Cscape 10, the latest it­er­a­tion of its in­dustry-renowned auto­ma­tion soft­ware. Known for its ease of use and ver­sat­il­ity, Cscape 10 provides en­gin­eers with power­ful tools to pro­gram, con­fig­ure, and mon­it­or their OCS con­trol­lers in an in­tu­it­ive, drag-and-drop en­vir­on­ment.

Not­able en­hance­ments in­clude:

• Ad­vanced Graph­ics En­gine: De­signed to take full ad­vant­age of the high-defin­i­tion dis­plays in the Can­vas Series, Cscape 10 al­lows users to design soph­ist­ic­ated and re­spons­ive HMI screens. 
• Im­proved Pro­gram­ming Tools: Cscape 10 in­tro­duces new func­tion blocks and en­hanced lad­der lo­gic, mak­ing it easi­er for en­gin­eers to pro­gram com­plex con­trol tasks ef­fi­ciently.
   

Cscape 10 is de­signed to meet the de­mands of a wide range of in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions, from ba­sic auto­ma­tion to ad­vanced con­trol sys­tems, en­abling users to pro­gram their sys­tems with ease and pre­ci­sion. Cscape 10 can be down­loaded free of charge at www.hornerauto­ma­tion.eu

Horner Auto­ma­tion has also giv­en a pre­view of two highly an­ti­cip­ated products cur­rently in de­vel­op­ment: the OCS CPU and OCS 360, both of which are poised to re­define the cap­ab­il­it­ies of all-in-one con­trol­lers.

OCS CPU Range: Power­ful CPU with Horner OCS I/O Ex­pan­sion

The Horner OCS that fea­tures a com­bined con­trol­ler, HMI, I/O and net­work­ing has been very suc­cess­ful since its launch in the 1990’s. Horner are now launch­ing CPUs that can be ex­pan­ded with OCS I/O and viewed and con­trolled by a re­mote con­nec­ted screen or by a web browser. Key high­lights in­clude:

• Re-think­ing the all-in-one con­trol­ler with sim­pli­fied op­tion­al FPD-Link dis­plays.
• Pos­sible to eas­ily ret­ro­fit tra­di­tion­al HMI / PLC in­stall­a­tions and still take ad­vant­age of pro­gram­ming in the all-in-one Cscape soft­ware pack­age.
• Com­pat­ible with OCS-I/O mod­ules for loc­al and re­mote I/O ex­pan­sion.
   

OCS360: Plat­form as a Ser­vice (PaaS) for Data Col­lec­tion, Cloud-based visu­al­isa­tion, and re­mote con­nectiv­ity

OCS360 is Horner Auto­ma­tion’s up­com­ing com­pre­hens­ive solu­tion plat­form for data col­lec­tion and visu­al­isa­tion which provides end-to-end vis­ib­il­ity and re­mote con­nectiv­ity, de­liv­er­ing en­hanced op­er­a­tion­al in­tel­li­gence.

Ex­pec­ted fea­tures in­clude: 

• Cloud-Based Visu­al­isa­tion: OCS360 dash­boards of­fer an in­tu­it­ive drag-and-drop in­ter­face with a di­verse wid­get lib­rary, al­low­ing real-time data visu­al­isa­tion of data re­ceived from OCS devices us­ing the MQTT pro­tocol.
• Remote Con­nectiv­ity: The OCS360’s re­mote con­nectiv­ity se­curely fa­cil­it­ates the con­nec­tion of Cscape for re­mote troubleshoot­ing, pro­gram, and firm­ware up­grades and WebMI pages seam­lessly over the cloud.
• Data Col­lec­tion and Ad­vanced Ana­lyt­ics: AI (Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence) and ML (Ma­chine Learn­ing) ana­lyt­ics on OCS360 plat­form en­able soph­ist­ic­ated data ana­lys­is and de­cision-mak­ing.
   

As busi­nesses face the chal­lenges of In­dustry 4.0, Horner re­mains com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing auto­ma­tion solu­tions that are simple to im­ple­ment, yet power­ful in their cap­ab­il­it­ies. Wheth­er up­grad­ing ex­ist­ing sys­tems or build­ing new auto­ma­tion in­fra­struc­ture, cus­tom­ers can rely on Horner to provide the tools they need for suc­cess in a com­pet­it­ive and dy­nam­ic mar­ket.

For more in­form­a­tion and to see these products in ac­tion, vis­it us at SPS – Smart Pro­duc­tion Solu­tions 2024 in Hall 7, Stand 151 or vis­it www.hornerauto­ma­tion.eu

sps ex­hib­it­or 2024: Hall 7/151

"To­geth­er with our M12 cable as­sem­blies, sensor-ac­tu­at­or as­sem­blies and Eth­er­net patch cables, the new re­mote I/O devices form a per­fect over­all solu­tion for in­ter­linked sys­tems," says Jürgen Greger, Product Man­ager In­dus­tri­al Com­mu­nic­a­tion at LAPP. With the re­mote I/O devices, LAPP en­ables bi­d­irec­tion­al com­mu­nic­a­tion up to field level. The new port­fo­lio in­cludes the IO-Link mas­ters UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS MP08 IOL and UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS SP08 IOL as well as the IO-Link hub UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS HUB08 IOL with glob­ally stand­ard­ised IO-Link tech­no­logy. This al­lows di­git­al sensors and ac­tu­at­ors to be con­veni­ently in­teg­rated in­to the IO-Link net­work. IO-Link also al­lows ex­ten­ded dia­gnostics of sensors and ac­tu­at­ors and fa­cil­it­ates the com­mis­sion­ing and re­place­ment of IO-Link devices thanks to plug-and-play.

Multi-pro­tocol op­tions avail­able

A spe­cial fea­ture is the wide range of func­tions and pro­tocol op­tions. The IO-Link mas­ter (single pro­tocol), the IO-Link mas­ter (multi-pro­tocol) and the IO-Link hub all sup­port IO-Link. The single pro­tocol and multi-pro­tocol vari­ants are avail­able for the In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net pro­to­cols PROFINET, Eth­er­net/IP, Eth­er­CAT, Mod­bus TCP and CC-Link IE, de­pend­ing on the art­icle. The re­spect­ive pro­tocol is set us­ing a rotary cod­ing switch.

The IO-Link mas­ter and the di­git­al mod­ule are con­figured via a web in­ter­face. The IO-Link hub is set up us­ing the IO-Link mas­ter. Both shiel­ded and un­shiel­ded stand­ard cables can be used for IO-Link com­mu­nic­a­tion. The max­im­um length is 20 metres. Jürgen Greger sum­mar­ises: "Com­pared to Eth­er­net com­mu­nic­a­tion, IO-Link is more cost-ef­fect­ive and easi­er to in­teg­rate. The di­git­al mod­ule UNITRON­IC® AC­CESS MP08 DIO is avail­able for ap­plic­a­tions that do not re­quire IO-Link tech­no­logy.

Soft­ing In­dus­tri­al an­nounces the in­teg­ra­tion of OPC Uni­fied Ar­chi­tec­ture (UA) In­form­a­tion Mod­el­ing in­to its edge product range as well as the Se­cure In­teg­ra­tion Serv­er (SIS). This OPC UA In­form­a­tion Mod­el­ing in­clud­ing the sup­port of OPC UA Com­pan­ion Stand­ards provides a struc­tured way to rep­res­ent ma­chine data, mak­ing it easi­er to in­ter­pret and share across dif­fer­ent sys­tems.

This stand­ard­ized mod­el en­ables real-time man­age­ment and mon­it­or­ing of di­git­al rep­res­ent­a­tions of phys­ic­al as­sets, such as ma­chines and sensors.

This is es­sen­tial for op­tim­iz­ing work­flows, im­prov­ing de­cision-mak­ing, and sup­port­ing pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance.

The in­teg­ra­tion opens a new di­men­sion of op­por­tun­it­ies for man­u­fac­tur­ers and in­dus­tri­al op­er­at­ors. Key ad­vant­ages in­clude:

• In­ter­op­er­ab­il­ity: A stand­ard­ized in­form­a­tion mod­el makes it easy to con­nect vari­ous devices and sys­tems across dif­fer­ent vendors and pro­to­cols.
• Sim­pli­fied Data Hand­ling: Struc­tured and uni­fied data mod­els make the ex­trac­tion, in­ter­pret­a­tion, and trans­fer of ma­chine data much more stream­lined, fa­cil­it­at­ing seam­less II­oT in­teg­ra­tion.
• En­hanced Se­cur­ity: Coupled with the OPC UA Se­cur­ity Func­tion­al­ity, this in­teg­ra­tion en­sures that the data ex­change between ma­chines and sys­tems re­mains se­cure and com­pli­ant with in­dustry stand­ards.
• Im­proved Ef­fi­ciency: By us­ing a single frame­work for data trans­fer and device in­ter­ac­tion, op­er­at­ors can re­duce the time and ef­fort re­quired for con­fig­ur­a­tion, data in­ter­pret­a­tion, and over­all sys­tem in­teg­ra­tion.
• Scalab­il­ity: The in­teg­ra­tion en­ables easy scal­ing of in­dus­tri­al ap­plic­a­tions, as op­er­at­ors can stand­ard­ize ma­chine data hand­ling across nu­mer­ous devices and sys­tems with min­im­al dis­rup­tion.
   

Soft­ing In­dus­tri­al’s edge­Con­nect­or products en­able seam­less com­mu­nic­a­tion between con­trol sys­tems and the cloud, play­ing a cru­cial role in con­nect­ing op­er­a­tion­al tech­no­logy (OT) and In­form­a­tion Tech­no­logy (IT) sys­tems in II­oT en­vir­on­ments. These con­nect­ors of­fer re­li­able data col­lec­tion from field devices and con­trol sys­tems, which can then be trans­ferred to cloud plat­forms for fur­ther ana­lys­is and op­tim­iz­a­tion.

The edgeG­ate fur­ther en­hances this pro­cess by provid­ing ro­bust gate­way func­tion­al­ity, en­sur­ing smooth and se­cure data flow between OT sys­tems and cloud or en­ter­prise ap­plic­a­tions. It of­fers built-in fea­tures for pro­tocol con­ver­sion, edge ana­lyt­ics, and data ag­greg­a­tion.

The Se­cure In­teg­ra­tion Serv­er from Soft­ing In­dus­tri­al is de­signed to en­sure se­cure, re­li­able data trans­fer between ma­chines, devices, and IT sys­tems. By us­ing state-of­the-art en­cryp­tion and se­cur­ity pro­to­cols, it safe­guards crit­ic­al ma­chine data from un­au­thor­ized ac­cess and cy­ber threats, while also sup­port­ing a flex­ible, scal­able in­teg­ra­tion of IT and OT en­vir­on­ments.

This move marks an­oth­er sig­ni­fic­ant step for­ward in Soft­ing In­dus­tri­al’s com­mit­ment to provid­ing state-of-the-art solu­tions for In­dustry 4.0 and the fu­ture of di­git­al in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions.

The IF56 converter from Lika Electronic is specifically designed to interface SSI and BiSS encoders and integrate them fully and easily into the most popular industrial Ethernet networks: Profinet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, POWERLINK, MODBUS-TCP, and CC-LINK. Compared to the previous model IF55, it offers completely new hardware and adds some new features, such as the integrated web server available for all protocols except POWERLINK, the firmware update function, and the extended range of the resolutions that can be interfaced. Any SSI or BiSS encoder (singleturn and multiturn rotary encoder, linear encoder, or bearingless encoder) can be connected having a singleturn resolution of max. 18 bits and a total resolution of max. 31 bits, the MSB Left Aligned or LSB Right Aligned protocols, and the binary or Gray output codes. In addition, there is no need to make any changes in the hardware or software of the encoder; only the converter needs a simple parametrization to be provided. The encoder will be configured as a Slave device and be able to communicate in the Ethernet network in a complete and efficient manner, in compliance with the specifications of each protocol. 

For confined spaces and retrofit

The IF56 gateway is ideally suited for the retrofit of outdated plants or to integrate stand-alone machines. It can be used when the space is narrow and does not allow for larger standard Ethernet encoders and when the integration of small linear encoders and bearingless encoders is required. 

In the case of old plant retrofit or integration projects, instead of being discarded, an existing SSI or BiSS encoder can be converted and reused in a more modern and integrated communication system. It is also perfect when the space is constricted. Because of their electronics, Ethernet encoders have larger dimensions than SSI encoders, and the minimum size is the 58 mm flange design. Today it is finally possible to install even small 36 mm flange encoders and connect them to the Ethernet network through the gateway. Furthermore, the IF56 converter allows to integrate also minimum-footprint linear encoders and bearingless encoders that cannot be installed in the Ethernet applications because of their physical features. 

The IF56 gateway is easy and quick to install and set up. It has a metal housing with an IP65 protection rate and also clips for DIN TS35 rail mounting. Its mechanical dimensions are exactly the same as the previous IF55 model. It is fully compliant with each protocol and the Ethernet technology and offers real-time communication, high speed up to 100 Mbit/s, flexible network topologies, extensive diagnostics, and complete IT integration. It is equipped with the full set of information and configuration parameters and functions (position readout, scaling, preset, code sequence, by-pass, web server, firmware update, etc.), as well as with LEDs for visual diagnostic information in compliance with the specifications of the installed protocol.

The IF56 gateway will replace the previous IF55 model in the near future.
 

The JUMO di­giL­ine O-DO H10/H20 sensor en­sures pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity for meas­ure­ments in aqueous solu­tions. High-qual­ity sensor ver­sions en­able use in hy­gien­ic and de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions. The sensor is used in the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry, bi­o­tech­no­logy and the food and bever­age in­dustry. Thanks to the latest op­tic­al tech­no­logy, the trace and sat­ur­a­tion con­cen­tra­tion meas­ure­ment func­tion quickly provides the cus­tom­er with the re­quired res­ults. What's more, the JUMO di­giL­ine provides a re­li­able di­git­al means of pro­cess con­trol.

Stand­ard or trace  meas­ure­ment range

The sensor is made of high qual­ity stain­less steel. In the stand­ard meas­ur­ing range, the meas­ured val­ues are between 0 and 22 ppm (mg/l) and, if re­quired, up to 45 ppm (mg/l). The trace range cov­ers 0 to 2000 ppb (µg/l). Ana­logue and di­git­al in­ter­faces al­low con­nec­tion to field in­stru­ments and pro­cess con­trol sys­tems. Con­nec­tion to the in­tel­li­gent, bus-com­pat­ible JUMO di­giL­ine sys­tem is simple via plug and play. The sensor is fact­ory cal­ib­rated and ready for im­me­di­ate use. Re­cal­ib­ra­tion can be car­ried out at any time on the JUMO AQUIS touch S/P or con­veni­ently on a PC us­ing the JUMO DSM soft­ware.
The pre­cise meas­ure­ment with long-term sta­bil­ity en­sures high pro­cess re­li­ab­il­ity. The sensors re­quire little main­ten­ance and can be eas­ily con­nec­ted to dif­fer­ent meas­ur­ing sys­tems. Op­er­a­tion via the JUMO di­giL­ine in­ter­face al­lows ac­cess to sensor and pro­cess data such as the num­ber of CIP/SIP cycles. The eval­u­ation of data en­ables pre­dict­ive main­ten­ance and thereby more ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tion. As a res­ult, the plant op­er­at­or can pre­dict the de­liv­ery of spare parts in line with de­mand. The same ap­plies to ne­ces­sary clean­ing and main­ten­ance work, which is not based on fixed in­ter­vals but on de­mand.

Moxa an­nounces the launch of its MPC-3000 Series pan­el com­puters. De­signed to ad­dress the di­verse needs of in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments, the MPC-3000 pan­el com­puters of­fer a range of screen sizes, a ro­bust fea­ture set, and in­dustry cer­ti­fic­a­tions aimed at re­li­ab­il­ity, dur­ab­il­ity, and ver­sat­il­ity in de­mand­ing op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments. The series is powered by In­tel Atom® x6000E pro­cessors, of­fer­ing ex­cep­tion­al ver­sat­il­ity with six screen sizes ran­ging from 7 inches to 15.6 inches. De­signed for use in harsh in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments, these pan­el PCs come with ad­vanced glove-friendly touch­screen func­tion­al­ity and sun­light-read­able dis­plays, and sup­port wide-tem­per­at­ure op­er­a­tions from -30 to 60°C, mak­ing them well-suited for a vari­ety of out­door ap­plic­a­tions. Wheth­er de­ployed in oil and gas fields, mar­ine op­er­a­tions, out­door ap­plic­a­tions, or oth­er de­mand­ing set­tings, the MPC-3000 pan­el PCs are re­li­able and ef­fi­cient, even in tough con­di­tions.

Cer­ti­fied for safe op­er­a­tions

Fur­ther­more, the mod­u­lar design of the rugged pan­el PCs sim­pli­fies main­ten­ance and min­im­izes down­time in de­mand­ing in­dus­tri­al en­vir­on­ments. By of­fer­ing a cable­less ap­proach on both the front and rear pan­els, the design re­duces com­plex­ity, mak­ing com­pon­ent re­place­ment quick and easy. This stream­lined, mod­u­lar ar­chi­tec­ture en­hances op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­ciency, en­sur­ing main­ten­ance tasks cause min­im­al dis­rup­tion.

De­signed spe­cific­ally for in­dus­tries such as oil and gas, mar­ine, and out­door ap­plic­a­tions, the MPC-3000 pan­el PCs are cer­ti­fied to meet the rig­or­ous de­mands of ex­treme op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments. Cer­ti­fic­a­tions in­clude Class I Di­vi­sion 2, ATEX Zone 2, and IECEx Zone 2 for haz­ard­ous loc­a­tions, as well as DNV, IEC 60945, and IACS stand­ards for mari­time op­er­a­tions. These cer­ti­fic­a­tions, along with the pan­el PCs’ rugged con­struc­tion, en­sure de­pend­able per­form­ance and safety, mak­ing them an ideal choice for mis­sion-crit­ic­al ap­plic­a­tions in chal­len­ging set­tings. 
 

One con­trol stand­ard for sev­er­al ap­plic­a­tions - this was NORD's aim in de­vel­op­ing the NOR­DAC PRO SK 500P. The res­ult is a con­trol cab­in­et in­vert­er whose fea­tures al­low a high de­gree of ver­sat­il­ity and in­tel­li­gent com­mu­nic­a­tion with sys­tem com­pon­ents. As a res­ult, NORD users can re­duce the num­ber of in­vert­er vari­ants in use.

Ver­sat­ile in­teg­ra­tion

As with all NOR­DAC PRO in­vert­ers, the in­teg­rated multi-pro­tocol Eth­er­net in­ter­face is one of the key ele­ments. It al­lows the con­trol com­pon­ent to be in­teg­rated in­to vari­ous net­works without the need for ret­ro­fit­ting. These in­clude the Profinet, Eth­er­CAT, Eth­er­Net/IP and POWER­LINK pro­to­cols. De­pend­ing on the mod­el, oth­er pro­to­cols are also covered. A USB in­ter­face also al­lows the in­vert­er to be para­met­erised without voltage.

The in­teg­rated PLC re­acts auto­mat­ic­ally to pro­cess changes in the sys­tem. It can thus re­lieve the high­er-level con­trol­ler. The POSICON po­s­i­tion­ing func­tion per­forms a vari­ety of po­s­i­tion­ing tasks. It is equally cap­able of con­trolling re­l­at­ive or ab­so­lute po­s­i­tion­ing us­ing in­cre­ment­al or ab­so­lute en­coders. Para­met­er set switch­ing even al­lows se­quen­tial po­s­i­tion­ing of up to four axes.

Con­trol of devices from lift­ing gear to pumps

The NOR­DAC PRO SK 500P en­ables users to im­ple­ment a wide range of in­dustry-spe­cif­ic drive ap­plic­a­tions. The con­trol cab­in­et in­vert­er fea­tures vec­tor con­trol with an over­load re­serve of 200%. This makes it suit­able for con­trolling geared mo­tors in heavy-duty ap­plic­a­tions or lift­ing sys­tems. Its PI con­trol­ler and in­teg­rated com­pens­a­tion con­trol make it the ideal drive for pumps and wind­ing sys­tems. At the same time, the book-sized drive re­quires very little space in the con­trol cab­in­et and can be in­stalled dir­ectly next to each oth­er without any gaps.

With the NOR­DAC PRO SK 500P it is pos­sible to con­trol all mo­tor types with and without en­coder feed­back. NORD is cur­rently work­ing on new sizes of the in­vert­er to make its be­ne­fits avail­able in a wider power range.
 

Belden has an­nounced the re­lease of its new Lum­berg Auto­ma­tion In­ner M12 Push Pull con­nect­ors, which com­ply with the In­ter­na­tion­al Elec­tro­tech­nic­al (IEC) stand­ard 61076-2-010. Fea­tur­ing a se­cure, quick-lock­ing con­tact meth­od, the M12 Push Pull con­nect­ors are ideal for use in harsh en­vir­on­ments to pre­vent ac­ci­dent­al dis­con­nec­tions that cause down­time, dis­rupt data col­lec­tion or cre­ate safety haz­ards. As or­gan­isa­tions pur­sue di­git­al trans­form­a­tion, con­nect­ing more op­er­a­tion­al tech­no­logy (OT) devices and in­form­a­tion tech­no­logy (IT) sys­tems en­ables them to col­lect and trans­fer more data, pro­mote up­time and gain op­er­a­tion­al ef­fi­cien­cies. The M12 push-pull con­nect­or an­swers the call with its simple, se­cure con­tact­ing meth­od and a port­fo­lio of X-coded, D-coded and A-coded vari­ants to meet a wide range of in­dus­tri­al and trans­port­a­tion use cases. 

Con­tact without tools

M12 push-pull con­nect­ors provide se­cure, tool-free con­tact even in tight spaces, such as on in­put/out­put (IO) mod­ules or switches. Sim­pli­fied in­stall­a­tion and main­ten­ance without the need for screw con­nect­ors can re­duce in­stall­a­tion time by up to 80%. The M12 push-pull con­nect­or meets the strin­gent re­quire­ments of a wide range of in­dus­tries, in­clud­ing rail vehicles, ports, in­t­ra­lo­gist­ics or­gan­isa­tions, sup­ply chain and ma­ter­i­al hand­ling, as well as tra­di­tion­al auto­ma­tion en­vir­on­ments.

With the safe radar system PSENradar from Pilz, it is now possible to implement protection zone monitoring in harsh environments for additional applications. Extended field of view functions make it easier to integrate the radar sensors into different production environments. The flexibility provided by adaptable fields of view is particularly beneficial in confined spaces. It is also now possible to connect to the open Safety over EtherCAT FSoE safety protocol, resulting in less wiring and lower costs.

In addition to the existing radar sensors with a detection range of 0 to 5 metres, the safe radar sensor PSEN rd1.2 sensor F-FOV LR is now also available with a range of 0 to 9 metres. This enables efficient safeguarding of mobile applications.

Flexible viewing angle 

A new feature of both sensor devices is the option of flexibly configuring the fields of view: in addition to the symmetrical viewing angle, asymmetrical and corridor-like viewing angles can now also be configured. This means that PSENradar can be used reliably in different production environments. It also saves space in the production area, particularly where space is limited, for example where machines are located directly next to each other or where walkways lead directly past the machines. Now that the field of view settings can be configured more individually, the radar sensor can be positioned more flexibly without restricting production. This not only improves safety in harsh environments, but also increases productivity.

Radar connects 

Together with the configurable mini PLC PNOZmulti 2 from Pilz, PSENradar provides a safe, complete solution for monitoring protection zones - including safe data transfer with FSoE in the EtherCAT communication system. The new evaluation unit for the PSENradar radar system enables FSoE functionality to IEC 61508 for safety applications up to SIL 3. As FSoEMainInstance (FSoE Master), PNOZmulti 2 combines monitoring of all of a radar application’s safety functions in one device, and establishes connections to safe FSoE SubordinateInstances (FSoE Slaves) in the network. In a complete package consisting of a safe small controller PNOZmulti 2 as FSoE MainInstance with the safe radar system, you can easily implement this safety-related networking as a single-cable solution - with minimum wiring effort.
 

Wieland Electric's samos© PRO MOTION is a new all-in-one safety controller with integrated motion functionality. A total of six TÜV-certified motion function blocks ensure that up to 60 per cent fewer modules are required than with comparable suppliers, thus creating more space in the control cabinet. Among other things, the compact, programmable controller enables safe standstill monitoring, even for vertical and slow-moving axes, and also scores points with an anti-vibration toolbox for macro- and micro-vibrations.

Intuitive configuration options

Whether in mechanical engineering or intralogistics, the compact safety controller from Wieland Electric with up to 70 kHz motion inputs on the base module is suitable wherever reliable standstill, speed, direction and position monitoring is required. The integrated motion function modules include safe standstill monitoring (SSM). This can be implemented with either a speed window or a position window. The limits of the position window or hysteresis can be easily defined using intuitive configuration options. This enables reliable and continuous monitoring of vertical and slow-moving axes, e.g. in construction cranes, lifting platforms, high-bay warehouses or presses.

Filtering of micro- and macro vibrations

Also on board the samos© PRO MOTION is an anti-vibration toolbox, available via the samos© PLAN6 software, which supports reliable standstill monitoring during commissioning, calibration, maintenance, cleaning or even tool changes. This is precisely where vibrations can occur, which can be eliminated with the appropriate functions: The "standstill" function module is used for macro vibrations. For micro vibrations, Wieland Electric has integrated a professional "vibration filter" into the motion functions. Within the framework of three options, the user can thus find the optimum compromise between availability and safety. The documentation for the safety controller is also helpful, as it provides a clear overview of which safety level can be achieved with which filter option.

As is the case for the samos© PRO safety controller, Wieland Electric also offers a high-performance programming software for the new samos© PRO MOTION. The intuitive samos© PLAN6 configuration tool has an extensive library of TÜV-certified function blocks containing typical, application-specific safety functions. It is easy to use via drag & drop. This significantly reduces engineering effort, project planning time and the possibility of errors. Users also benefit from easy documentation and save time when it comes to CE declaration of the machine. With the integrated One-Click Documentation, the documents for the CE declaration of conformity are available at the push of a button, saving time in the approval process.
 

With the launch of the IEP3, FAULHABER expands its product line with an incremental encoder which, thanks to the latest chip technology, achieves a very high resolution and accuracy. With a diameter of just 8 mm, the IEP3 is very lightweight and compact yet still offers a resolution of up to 10,000 lines per revolution – made possible by the latest chip technology with high interpolation. In the standard version, the resolution is freely programmable from 1 - 4,096 lines per revolution. Moreover, the chip technology that is used ensures a high positional accuracy of typically 0.3 °m as well as a high repeatability of typically 0.05 °m thanks to accuracy compensation.

Encoder platform for various motors

The IEP3 can be powered with a supply voltage of both 5 V and 3.3 V. This makes it suitable for use in battery-powered applications as well, which are typically operated with 3.3 V. A wide temperature range of -40 to + 125 °C likewise opens the door for various possible uses. The IEP3 is suitable for a wide array of applications and is characterized by high accuracy in the smallest of installation spaces. Application areas include, among others, prosthetics in the field of medical technology, optical applications, such as telescopes, microscopes, lasers or cameras, semiconductor production or robotics. The ON-axis encoder with 2-pole-sensor magnet is simple in design and robust. Thanks to its modular characteristics, which FAULHABER already established with the IE3 encoder series, the IEP3 encoder represents a platform for various motors from the drive specialist. The new product can be combined with DC-motors of the 0816SR, 1016SR, 1024SR series as well as with the stepper motors of the AM0820, AM1020, AM1524 series. Various options are available for the electrical connection of the encoder, such as PVC or FEP cables, connector options as well as different cable lengths.
 

Trio Mo­tion Tech­no­logy is launch­ing a new ma­chine con­trol­ler for large ma­chines with con­trol for up to 128 servo drive and ro­bot axes over high speed Eth­er­CAT. The new quad-core Flex-7 Flex­ible Ma­chine Con­trol­ler also in­creases ma­chine auto­ma­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies by ex­pand­ing net­work con­nectiv­ity and data pro­cessing power, com­bin­ing con­trol flex­ib­il­ity and com­pact di­men­sions. It fea­tures ded­ic­ated cores for high per­form­ance com­mu­nic­a­tions and mo­tion. The new Flex-7, a single con­trol­ler for ma­chine, mo­tion, and ro­bot­ics, pre­cisely co­ordin­ates high ax­is counts while op­tim­ising con­trol and in­teg­ra­tion with ex­pan­ded auto­ma­tion sys­tems. The multi-ax­is ma­chine con­trol­ler is de­signed for large ap­plic­a­tions in man­u­fac­tur­ing auto­ma­tion, pack­aging, and ma­ter­i­al hand­ling.

High-speed Eth­er­net ports

Provid­ing power­ful ma­chine con­trol, Flex-7 fea­tures high-speed Eth­er­net to give fast, re­li­able data ex­change, op­tim­ising com­mu­nic­a­tions with wider con­trol­lers and net­works. This is achieved with two, 1Gbps Eth­er­net ports, com­pat­ible with In­dus­tri­al Eth­er­net pro­to­cols in­clud­ing Eth­er­net/IP and Mod­bus TCP. The Flex-7 in­creases con­trol to 128 servo or ro­bot axes and provides the high pre­ci­sion mo­tion co­ordin­a­tion that Trio is renowned for. Flex-7 achieves Eth­er­CAT up­date rates as fast as 125µs for up to eight axes, and the full 128 axes are co­ordin­ated with up­date rates down to 4ms. En­sur­ing con­sist­ent mo­tion syn­chron­isa­tion for large ma­chines, Flex-7 fea­tures <5µsec jit­ter and can con­trol a wide vari­ety of Eth­er­CAT devices in­clud­ing servo drives and I/O.

Com­pact con­trol­ler size

A theme of Trio’s Flex con­trol­ler range is com­pact size, and this is con­tin­ued with the Flex-7. Just 51mm wide, 147mm high, and 107mm deep, the DIN rail-moun­ted ma­chine con­trol­ler en­ables simple design in­teg­ra­tion and in­stall­a­tion. Ma­chine con­trol func­tion­al­ity can be ad­ded dir­ectly with Trio’s range of click-in Flexslice I/O mod­ules that com­mu­nic­ate with the Flex-7 us­ing Eth­er­CAT via the Ebus in­ter­face. Flexslice I/O slices give ma­chine build­ers flex­ib­il­ity in adding re­quired func­tion­al­ity while min­im­ising space and cost.

Flex-7’s mo­tion syn­chron­isa­tion cap­ab­il­ity is powered by Trio’s Mo­tion-iX mo­tion en­gine. Mo­tion-iX is based on a com­mand set for servo and ro­bot axes, in­clud­ing multi-ax­is co­ordin­a­tion in mul­tiple di­men­sions, as well as nu­mer­ous kin­emat­ic mod­els for ro­bot­ics. The mo­tion en­gine is ac­cessed through Trio’s Mo­tion Per­fect soft­ware in­ter­face, and pro­gram­ming can be achieved with Trio Ba­sic, de­signed to speed-up de­vel­op­ment through its Eng­lish lan­guage-based ap­proach, as well as IEC lan­guages in­clud­ing ST and LD, as well as PLCopen.
 

The new SICK W10 stands for ver­sat­il­ity and a high de­gree of flex­ib­il­ity in ap­plic­a­tion design. This opens up a wide range of ap­plic­a­tions for the pho­to­elec­tric prox­im­ity sensor across nu­mer­ous in­dus­tri­al sec­tors, for ex­ample in the ro­bust and re­li­able de­tec­tion of ob­jects with dif­fer­ent or chal­len­ging sur­face prop­er­ties such as gloss, col­or or struc­tures.

Slide switches, po­ten­tiomet­ers, knobs - the W10 does away with them all. This is made pos­sible by the touch screen dis­play. Speed, stand­ard or pre­ci­sion modes, fore­ground or back­ground sup­pres­sion, in­di­vidu­al teach-in set­tings, pre-con­figured para­met­ers and lim­its - the op­er­at­or can se­lect, re­call, ad­just and save everything in­tu­it­ively. A spe­cial se­cur­ity fea­ture of the W10 is the screen lock , which pro­tects set­tings from un­au­thor­ised ac­cess or changes. Al­tern­at­ively, the W10 can be eas­ily set up via IO-Link . It can also com­mu­nic­ate via this in­ter­face. The W10 has two di­git­al out­puts for out­put­ting switch­ing sig­nals.

Re­li­able de­tec­tion over short and long ranges

The W10 com­bines a high-pre­ci­sion Class 1 laser light source - whose fo­cused beam pro­duces only a small spot of light on an ob­ject - with a fast and ac­cur­ate re­ceiv­er eval­u­ation line. Thanks to this tech­no­logy, the sensor achieves very pre­cise de­tec­tion res­ults with high re­peat­ab­il­ity, both in the short-range ver­sion with work­ing dis­tances between 25 mm and 400 mm, and in the long-range ver­sion with ranges from 25 mm to 700 mm: ideal for pre­cise ob­ject and po­s­i­tion de­tec­tion. In speed mode , the re­sponse time is 1.8 ms, en­sur­ing re­li­able switch­ing even at high ma­chine speeds.

Wide range of ap­plic­a­tions

By us­ing dy­nam­ic al­gorithms de­veloped for spe­cif­ic ap­plic­a­tions, the W10 achieves high re­li­ab­il­ity and good re­peat­ing ac­cur­acy ex works. The pho­to­elec­tric prox­im­ity switch of­fers in­di­vidu­al teach-in op­tions for spe­cif­ic ad­apt­a­tions. In ad­di­tion to the stand­ard 1-point teach, which de­tects ob­jects at a defined dis­tance, a 2-point teach al­lows ob­jects of dif­fer­ent heights to be de­tec­ted. A manu­al mode ex­tends the teach op­tions and provides even more flex­ib­il­ity. Both the short-range and long-range ver­sions of the W10 are avail­able in two hous­ing vari­ants: one for stand­ard mount­ing with a 1" hole and one for hy­brid mount­ing via the M18 thread on the front or the 1" hole on the side. With just two ver­sions - each with two col­our LEDs to in­dic­ate op­er­at­ing status - the W10 of­fers a high de­gree of mount­ing flex­ib­il­ity. This makes it suit­able for the most com­mon in­stall­a­tion situ­ations. The IP69k stain­less steel hous­ing makes all W10s ex­tremely ro­bust, able to with­stand harsh op­er­at­ing en­vir­on­ments, ag­gress­ive me­dia or fre­quent clean­ing cycles. This en­sures max­im­um up­time and avoids long ap­plic­a­tion down­time.
 

The CM­MT 3-ax­is mag­net­ic field/tem­per­at­ure sensor with IO-Link is the third sensor type that Turck has de­veloped spe­cific­ally for easy-to-use and ret­ro­fit­table con­di­tion mon­it­or­ing ap­plic­a­tions. It com­ple­ments the ex­ist­ing range con­sist­ing of the CM­VT vi­bra­tion/tem­per­at­ure sensor and the CMTH for hu­mid­ity and tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ments. The com­bined meas­ure­ment of mag­net­ic field and tem­per­at­ure with the CM­MT en­ables simple de­tec­tion of faults on mo­tors or in pro­cesses with mag­net­ic com­pon­ents. The new sensor also opens up ap­plic­a­tions that were pre­vi­ously im­possible, such as the con­tact­less de­tec­tion of the ro­ta­tion and move­ment of met­al ob­jects without visu­al con­tact.

App sup­por­ted auto­ma­tion soft­ware

Thanks to its high sens­it­iv­ity of five mi­crotesla, the sensor also de­tects the earth's mag­net­ic field, but can hide this if re­quired by set­ting the para­met­ers. The device out­puts meas­ured val­ues in­di­vidu­ally or as a vec­tor sum via IO-Link. Users can also as­sign two in­de­pend­ent switch­ing out­puts. The CM­MT sup­ports the Smart Sensor Pro­file 4.1.4. 
When com­mis­sion­ing the CM­MT, users are sup­por­ted by the Turck Auto­ma­tion Suite (TAS) Mag­net­ic Field Mon­it­or app. This ap­plic­a­tion visu­al­izes the sensor data live in the web browser and can be used via any Turck IO-Link mas­ter without ad­di­tion­al soft­ware. The device func­tions are also set via TAS or oth­er IODD in­ter­pret­ers. Be­sides the pro­cess val­ues, ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion such as op­er­at­ing hours and switch­ing cycles can also be out­put via the di­git­al in­ter­face.
 

The Twin­CAT Ma­chine Learn­ing Cre­at­or from Beck­hoff is aimed at auto­ma­tion and pro­cess ex­perts and ex­tends the Twin­CAT 3 work­flow to in­clude the auto­mated cre­ation of AI mod­els. This en­ables users to handle the en­tire pro­cess from data ac­quis­i­tion to the trained mod­el them­selves - without any AI ex­pert­ise. The fin­ished mod­el is op­tim­ally ad­ap­ted to the real-time re­quire­ments of the con­trol en­vir­on­ment in terms of latency and ac­cur­acy.

One of the main ap­plic­a­tions for the ver­sat­ile Twin­CAT Ma­chine Learn­ing Cre­at­or (TE3850) is AI-sup­por­ted im­age pro­cessing for qual­ity as­sur­ance. This, along with vari­ous oth­er ap­plic­a­tions, takes ad­vant­age of the ease and stand­ard­isa­tion of cre­at­ing AI mod­els for auto­ma­tion via no-code de­vel­op­ment plat­form. It not only lever­ages open stand­ards, in­ter­faces and best prac­tices, but also de­liv­ers trained mod­els in the open stand­ard ON­NX format. These latency-op­tim­ised AI mod­els for con­trol ap­plic­a­tions are spe­cially ad­ap­ted to run on Beck­hoff IPCs and with Twin­CAT products, al­though they can also be used as ON­NX mod­els out­side the Beck­hoff product world.

Keep­ing data in-house

With Twin­CAT Ma­chine Learn­ing Cre­at­or of­fer­ing fully auto­mated AI mod­el cre­ation, the po­ten­tial of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is now avail­able to all – in­clud­ing smal­ler com­pan­ies – of­fer­ing a com­pet­it­ive edge and much-needed solu­tions for the grow­ing short­age of spe­cial­ist skills. And for seasoned AI ex­perts, this solu­tion serves to stream­line their work­load con­sid­er­ably while also min­im­iz­ing the po­ten­tial for er­rors. The abil­ity to speed up project de­vel­op­ment pro­cesses of­fers yet an­oth­er clear ad­vant­age, par­tic­u­larly as the de­vel­op­ment tool provides ex­tens­ive and trans­par­ent meth­ods for dis­play­ing the be­ha­vi­or of the mod­els cre­ated and com­par­ing them with each oth­er. Users can also be­ne­fit from auto­mated re­port gen­er­a­tion, which sup­ports audit­ing pro­cesses for AI mod­el cre­ation. An­oth­er cru­cial as­pect is that the required ap­plic­a­tion-spe­cif­ic data re­mains pro­tec­ted, since it does not leave the com­pany.
 

With their slim design, Bach­mann’s in­tel­li­gent M100 I/O sys­tem mod­ules already save a lot of space. However, the HD (High Dens­ity) mod­ules, avail­able from mid-2025, set a new stand­ard in chan­nel dens­ity: With up to 1.5 times the num­ber of chan­nels packed in­to the same space as stand­ard mod­ules, the HD ver­sions sim­pli­fy the im­ple­ment­a­tion of ap­plic­a­tions where there is lim­ited space in the con­trol cab­in­et.

Di­git­al and ana­log mod­ules 

The new DIS136, DOS136 (each with 36 chan­nels, com­pared with 24 in the stand­ard ver­sion), AIO116 (16 chan­nels in­stead of 12) and UIO108 (8 chan­nels in­stead of 6) di­git­al and ana­log I/O mod­ules en­able ex­tremely com­pact I/O con­fig­ur­a­tions. They are spe­cific­ally de­signed for ap­plic­a­tions that need to pro­cess a large num­ber of di­git­al or ana­log I/O sig­nals. Ex­ten­ded cli­mate ver­sions will also be avail­able.The HD mod­ules of­fer the same in­tel­li­gent func­tions of the stand­ard M100 I/O mod­ules - PWM, coun­ters, timestamps, over­sampling and dir­ect mod­ule-to-mod­ule com­mu­nic­a­tion.

The con­densed mod­ules re­duce sys­tem costs and help to make man­u­fac­tur­ers more com­pet­it­ive: Ma­ter­i­al and as­sembly costs can be re­duced, and con­trol cab­in­ets can be de­signed more com­pactly, which is par­tic­u­larly be­ne­fi­cial in ap­plic­a­tions with lim­ited space. Re­duced heat dis­sip­a­tion pro­tects the hard­ware in­side the cab­in­et and even ex­tends its life
 

Wherever in­ert gases need to be pre­cisely con­trolled, the mass flow con­trol­ler VEFC from Festo is the right choice. Thanks to piezo tech­no­logy, it is com­pact and flex­ible, and of­fers an ex­cel­lent price/per­form­ance ra­tio. It is es­pe­cially suit­able for use in elec­tron­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing, food pro­duc­tion, and any­where in ma­chine build­ing where shield­ing gas is re­quired. The mass flow con­trol­ler VEFC from Festo is one of the most com­pact on the mar­ket, while cap­able of a flow rate of 200 l/min. Thanks to di­git­al­iz­a­tion, the flow rate re­mains con­stant.

This means that this dy­nam­ic, dir­ectly con­trolled piezo valve for in­ert gases doesn't have to be ad­jus­ted manu­ally. It only takes mil­li­seconds to pre­cisely ad­just the flow rates and their set­tings, and they re­main tamper-proof. This provides users with the flex­ib­il­ity they need for their pro­duc­tion pro­cesses. In ad­di­tion, the VEFC al­lows them to con­tinu­ously mon­it­or pro­cesses since the flow rate and out­put pres­sure are al­ways trans­par­ent.

Re­li­able pro­tec­tion of wafers

Re­li­ably con­trolling the flow of in­ert gases such as ni­tro­gen is par­tic­u­larly im­port­ant in the semi­con in­dustry in or­der to avoid dam­aging wafers. By fo­cus­ing on in­ert gases without me­dia sep­ar­a­tion, the VEFC proves to be a fa­vor­able al­tern­at­ive to oth­er solu­tions on the mar­ket when con­trolling ni­tro­gen in load ports or EFEMs.

Eco­nom­ic­al, re­li­able, and pre­cise N₂ pur­ging

Dif­fer­ent flow rates can be con­trolled in the in­di­vidu­al purge steps by hav­ing VEFC in the load port. It en­sures that only the ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary amount of ni­tro­gen is used, wheth­er dur­ing pre-blow­ing, pre-purge, pro­cess purge and post-purge. Users thus save ni­tro­gen and shorten the pro­cessing time un­til the dry shield­ing gas at­mo­sphere has been reached.
 

Kon­tron is present­ing a new rail­way-com­pat­ible Eth­er­net switch, which of­fers max­im­um flex­ib­il­ity in terms of the num­ber of in­di­vidu­ally re­quired Eth­er­net ports and per­form­ance from Fast Eth­er­net to 10GbE thanks to its mod­u­lar design. De­signed and man­u­fac­tured in Europe, the KSwitch R20 with ro­bust push-pull M-12 con­nec­tions en­ables in­ter­fer­ence-free data trans­mis­sion even un­der dif­fi­cult con­di­tions, such as use in pub­lic trans­port, where vi­bra­tions, shocks, ex­treme tem­per­at­ures or tem­per­at­ure fluc­tu­ations can oc­cur.

En­abling TSN ap­plic­a­tions

The highly scal­able and PTP-cap­able (Pre­ci­sion Time Pro­tocol) KSwitch R20 en­ables TSN (Time Sens­it­ive Net­work­ing) ap­plic­a­tions and the flex­ible, mod­u­lar use of up to 28 Power-over-Eth­er­net ports with 100Mbit/s / 1 / 2.5 / 5 / 10 GBit/s and thus an in­di­vidu­ally scal­able band­width util­isa­tion of up to 6Gbps. The fan­less Eth­er­net switch was de­veloped in com­pli­ance with EN50155, i.e., suit­able for rail­way ap­plic­a­tions, and of­fers par­tic­u­larly high shock and vi­bra­tion res­ist­ance. With its ex­tremely ro­bust design and the pos­sib­il­ity of op­er­a­tion in an ex­ten­ded tem­per­at­ure range between -40 °C and +70 °C (+85 °C for a max­im­um of 10 minutes), the fan­less KSwitch R20 is there­fore suit­able for par­tic­u­larly de­mand­ing ap­plic­a­tions in the rail­way en­vir­on­ment, such as rolling stock.

For com­plex net­work rout­ing

In­creas­ing net­work se­cur­ity re­quire­ments are already con­sidered in the design with se­cure con­fig­ur­a­tion man­age­ment via SSH, an en­cryp­ted con­fig­ur­a­tion dongle and a se­cure op­er­at­ing sys­tem. Thanks to the high band­width with PTP sup­port, the KSwitch R20 is de­signed for a broad data through­put and time-syn­chron­ised op­er­a­tion. All man­age­ment switch­ing and rout­ing fea­tures, such as uni­cast/mul­tic­ast switch­ing, for­ward­ing, VLANs, IG­MP snoop­ing and query­ing etc. are sup­por­ted. The KSwitch R20 mod­ule can be mon­itored via SN­MP over a seri­al line or Eth­er­net. Web-based man­age­ment and a com­pre­hens­ive com­mand line in­ter­face en­able lay­er 2/3 man­age­ment in­clud­ing full IPv6 sup­port. Func­tions such as IP for­ward­ing & mul­tic­ast, rout­ing & switch­ing, qual­ity of ser­vice, VLANs etc. en­able com­plex net­work rout­ing.
The KSwitch R20 can be op­er­ated in line with 24VDC to 110VDC +/- 20% and sup­ports up to 90W PoE power, which can be flex­ibly dis­trib­uted to the ports. This means that small con­sumers, such as cam­er­as or op­er­at­ing ter­min­als, can be sup­plied dir­ectly. Up to 600W PoE power can be dis­trib­uted to the ports via an ad­di­tion­al power feed. The mod­u­lar concept al­lows any con­fig­ur­a­tion based on FE (Fast Eth­er­net), GbE or 10GbE mod­ules, which can be used to real­ize cus­tom­ized solu­tions in ad­di­tion to the stand­ard KSwitch R20 con­fig­ur­a­tions.