One of the visions of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup (OPW) is the interoperability of controls and servodrives for packaging machines. The SERCOS interface™ trade associations demonstrated such interoperability with their Pack Profile interoperability demo, on display in the OPW booth at the recent Pack Expo 2004 in Chicago. The demo was also displayed at the recent SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nurernberg.The demo showed how SERCOS controllers and servodrives from five different automation technology vendors can easily be mixed and matched on machines or packaging lines, working seamlessly without tedious systems integration.
The products all conform to the SERCOS interface Pack Profile, a subset of the SERCOS interface functions defined for packaging machinery to improve multi-vendor interoperability of servos. The demo illustrated the benefits 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 provides a standard method for packaging machines to communicate data and commands to one another and to high-level factory computer systems.The published SERCOS Pack Profile specification and a white paper on the subject are available at www.sercos.com .
