The SERCOS interface™ trade associations will exhibit a Pack Profile interoperability demo at Pack Expo 2004, Nov. 7-11, in Chicago, IL. The exhibit, demonstrating interoperability of SERCOS interface products from multiple vendors, will be in the OMAC Packaging Workgroup booth, number C-67, strategically located in the concourse entrance to upper level McCormick Place North.The demo features controllers from Automation Intelligence, Beckhoff’ Bosch Rexroth and Rockwell Automation each running servodrives from those four vendors plus servodrives from Danaher Motion. The controllers and drives all conform to the SERCOS interface Pack Profile, a subset of the SERCOS interface functions defined for packaging machinery to improve the multi-vendor interoperability of servo controls and drives.
The SERCOS organizations developed the Pack Profile in response to a request by the OMAC Packaging Machinery Working Group.The demo illustrates the benefits to the packaging machine builder and end user of utilizing the SERCOS interface (IEC 61491) and PLCopen (IEC 61131-3) international standards, plus OMAC guidelines for interoperability such as the PackML™ state model with PackTags.
PackML standardizes machine states, modes, commands and data.After Pack Expo, the SERCOS Interoperability Demo will be exhibited at the SPS/IPC/DRIVES show November 23-25 in Nürnberg, Germany.The published SERCOS Pack Profile specification, plus a white paper on the subject, are available at www.sercos.com/pressroom/pr071904a.htm .See www.omac.org/wgs.GMC.gmc_default.htm for more information on the OMAC Packaging Workgroup and www.plcopen.org for more information on the IEC 61131-3 programming standard.