Sercos powers innovative robot

July 23, 2014 - Sercos International, supplier of the Sercos automation bus, powers the revolutionary drive construction and unique rotation options of the Penta Robotics’ Veloce parallel robot with its technology.

Designed for processes in which typical pick and place applications are required, the Veloce combines all required movements such as X, Y, Z translations and product rotation capabilities. It is therefore perfectly suited for the needs of the packaging, food processing, pharmaceutical, solar and semiconductor industries.

“The key innovation is the integration of the rotation as part of the robot architecture itself,” explains John Beerens, Chief Commercial Officer at Penta Robotics based in Vreeland, the Netherlands. He continues: ” This means that no additional rotation link and motor are needed to be positioned over the workspace, as the motors are symmetrically positioned in the Unibody. So, there are only mechanical links between the motors and the travelling plate.”

Using this kind of architecture means that Penta Robotics’ primary focus for developing the robot were functionality, user-friendly control and design.

Bosch Rexroth’s open core engineering allows the company to directly connect to the PLC via a self-developed App running on an Apple iPad. Motion controls, drives, vision and sensors are all interconnected via the Sercos automation bus that enables the interaction.

“Sercos is used in many areas and has its particular benefits in applications that need high speed at highest precision such as robotics,” explains Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International e.V.. “Our technology offers high speed due to fast Ethernet (100 Mbps full duplex) and a high data throughput because of the summation frame procedure used. The on-the-fly processing and direct cross communication reduce running times in the network to a minimum. The communication cycle time is configurable between 31.25μs and 65ms, with synchronization accuracy better than 1μs,” concludes Lutz.

Penta Robotics’ Veloce is used world-wide  in various industries and is supported by selected system integrators such as Emkon in Germany, Vector in Mexico, AFP in China and may more.

About Sercos International
Sercos International is an association of users and manufacturers that is in charge of technical development, standardization, certification and marketing for the Sercos automation bus. Conformance tests guarantee that Sercos implementations are standard-compliant, ensuring that devices from different manufacturers can be combined. Based in Germany, the organization presently has more than 90 member companies located around the world and has national liaison offices in North America and Asia.

About Sercos
The SErial Realtime COmmunication System, or Sercos, is one of the world’s leading digital interfaces for communication between controls, drives and decentralized peripheral devices. Sercos has been used in machine engineering for approximately 25 years and is implemented in over 4 million real-time nodes. With its open, manufacturer-independent Ethernet-based architecture, Sercos III is a universal bus for all automation solutions.

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