Sercos opts for CIP Safety

Sercos International (SI) is adopting CIP Safety as its safety protocol. At the recent SPS/IPC/Drives show in Germany, SI`s managing director, Peter Lutz announced that the organisation is adapting its Ethernet-based Sercos III specification to use the CIP Safety protocol. ODVA, the organisation responsible for CIP, will extend its CIP Safety specification to include profiles for Sercos devices. Together, SI and ODVA will establish conformance testing for devices implementing CIP Safety on Sercos.

"Using CIP Safety as the functional safety protocol on Sercos III opens up completely new possibilities and leads to greater versatility for applications with safety requirements," says Lutz. He adds that because SI had no previous history of safety developments, it wanted to choose an established standard, and felt it was closer to the ODVA than to alternatives such as the Profisafe protocol.

SI and ODVA expect to publish the necessary enhancements to their specifications during 2007 and to release the first device implementations by the end of the year.

• An SI working group has completed a profile for decentralised I/O modules as part of the Sercos III specification. The profile covers block and modular I/O, as well as hybrid devices that combine different functions (such as two-axis controls with I/O and master functions) in a single device.