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Motion control joins Siemens' engineering framework

12 March, 2013

The shorter bus cycle was developed specifically for motion control applications that need fast terminal-to-terminal responses, and is based on the Profinet 2.3 specification. This has defined mechanisms that make communication with Profinet even faster.

One of these mechanisms is “fast forwarding”, which reduces the throughput time in the switches to 1.2µs, and increases the communication speed in line structures. A “dynamic frame packaging” mechanism combines, in one telegram, the I/O data of several devices connected in line, reducing the communications overhead. All nodes use the bandwidth optimally by dynamically adapting the telegram. A third mechanism, called “fragmentation”, enables the cycle time to be reduced without restricting standard communications.

In a demonstration at Hannover, Siemens will show how a golf ball flying through the air at about 10m/s can be detected and caught by a device powered by two linear drives. A trace diagnostic function integrated in Simotion can be used to visualise the response time. An external PC can access this data via the same bus that acquires the sensor signal and controls the linear drives.

A further Simotion development on show at Hannover will be a series of compact terminal modules (above) that allow fast, precise I/Os to be connected to motion controls via high-speed Profinet IO with Isochronous Real Time (IRT). The 75mm-wide TMC1080 PN and TMC1180 PN modules offer high channel densities with 80 channels for specific digital inputs and outputs. The digital I/O with low signal delays are combined in groups of eight and the functions of each I/O channel can be parameterised selectively. The modules are connected as I/O devices on Profinet and can be used in a distributed configuration. They differ in their connection methods: the TMC1080 PN is wired directly via front terminals, while the TMC1180 PN is offset via ribbon cable plug-in connectors. 




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