Strong industry acceptance signals a bright future for the Ethernet-based fieldbus
NUREMBERG, Germany, December 7, 2005 – As a clear sign of industry acceptance, 40 Manufacturers showed over 75 different EtherCAT products in the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) booth at the SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nuremberg, Germany (November 22-24, 2005). With this strong showing, almost the entire spectrum of automation technology was covered.15 different manufacturers featured EtherCAT master devices at the show. PC based controls were on display as well as Embedded Controllers and small controllers for DIN Rail mounting. In addition, hardware, software and implementation services for EtherCAT master and slave devices were presented by 15 different vendors.
Particularly strong is EtherCAT’s depth in the motion sector: the variety ranges from small, low power servo drives to a frequency converter with 18 KW, which represents devices up to 4.5 MW. 12 vendors showed drives, most of them working in a multi-vendor display.On the sensor side, EtherCAT is fast on its way to becoming a standard offering: rotary encoders and position sensors with this interface were shown by six manufacturers. The product range is completed by I/O devices, safety devices, valve manifolds, digital servo valves, gateways, infrastructure components, communication modules and communication chips from a diverse group of suppliers.
“I am greatly encouraged by the support EtherCAT and the ETG received at the 2005 SPS show,” said EtherCAT Technology Group executive director, Martin Rostan. “I only see this trend increasing and in future shows we’ll see even more high end, EtherCAT-enabled products.”The large selection of products in the ETG trade show booth underlined the versatility of the technology: EtherCAT unites the I/O bus, the motion control bus and the safety bus into one system. Simple cable redundancy (optional), which does not even require special hardware, as well as hot-connect and hot-swap features demonstrate suitability for applications with high availability requirements.
Thanks to the cross communication between slaves and between several masters, EtherCAT technology is also a fit for networking several control systems together.
About EtherCAT Technology Group
The EtherCAT Technology Group is a forum in which key user companies from various industries and leading automation suppliers join forces to support, promote and advance EtherCAT technology. The EtherCAT Technology Group currently has 245 member companies from 26 countries. EtherCAT sets new standards for real-time Ethernet fieldbus performance because it can process 1000 distributed I/O in 30 µs or 100 axis in 100 µs.
Regarding topology, EtherCAT gives users the choice: it supports a simple low cost line structure, a tree structure, daisy chaining or drop lines as well as media redundancy options.For more information visit www.ethercat.org .
