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Passive: Connectivity Component
Solutions
Other related
products include Connectors and Components for Food and
Beverage and Solenoid Valve
Applications.
Active: Fieldbus and Ethernet Solutions
Early interconnection schemes employed
point-to-point wiring where individual wires connected input and output devices
to host controllers. On large automation jobs, this could account for tens and
even hundreds of thousands of points of termination. To cut down on wiring cost
and installation time, multi-conductor cables became popular.
The next innovation was the advent of the bus system. Rather than communication between device and host controller using a bulky home run cable, bus systems collect signals from multiple devices and transmit them on a single cable. Many digital networks are in use today for industrial automation applications. These networks range from low-level systems that gather data from simple discrete devices to sophisticated networks in which intelligent devices implement distributed control
The fieldbus suite of products from Lumberg Automation includes I/O Modules (digital/analog), Cord Sets, Terminating Resistors, TAP's, Receptacles, and Field Attachable Connectors for the following protocols:
Other related
products include LioN-Link
decentralized I/O fieldbus system for Profibus, DeviceNet, PROFINET, and
CANopen protocols.
By Ray DiVirgilio, Field Solutions Manager, Lumberg Automation
As
manufacturing automation strategies embraced Design for
Manufacturability (DFM), new automation technology advances and
investments in industrial control systems for equipment, machinery and
infrastructure led to distributed I/O, and, now, to enclosure-less I/0.
While quick disconnect connectors and enclosure-less I/O systems have
been available for years, new industrial designs often still use
enclosure-based strategies for I/O. These older, centralized enclosure
come at a high price: the vast amount of cabling required to connect
remote equipment to the terminations in the enclosure.
This paper
explores the impacts connectivity and cabling have had on streamlining
equipment and machinery, and the tradeoffs between enclosure-based
systems and enclosure-less based I/O systems. It offers guidelines and
application examples for use in determining when it makes sense to
employ the streamlining capabilities of enclosure-less I/O.