20 years of “wiring by mouse”

The goal was to bridge the gaps between hard-wired safety relays and freely pro­gram­mable safety sys­tems. A global stan­dard for safety was born – PNOZ­multi! The product – inno­v­a­tive at the time – took its place in the Pilz port­folio between the safety relays PNOZ and the safety sys­tems PSS. 20 years after its market launch, hun­dreds of thou­sands of PNOZ­multi devices are being used around the world, in all indus­tries – as the market leader in the con­fig­urable safety system sector.

The soft­ware tool PNOZ­multi Con­fig­u­rator has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in this suc­cess. Con­fig­u­ra­tion is extremely easy: All safety func­tions can easily be “wired by mouse” using drag-and-drop. The base ver­sion 11 is cur­rently avail­able, free of licensing costs and with a number of cer­ti­fied soft­ware blocks for safety and secu­rity appli­ca­tions for safe inter­ac­tion between human and machine.

Future-oriented technology, inspiring from the start

The first gen­er­a­tion was fol­lowed by the second, “leaner” gen­er­a­tion of PNOZ­multi in 2009: the “classic” PNOZ­multi base unit with 135 mil­lime­tres was con­densed to a narrow 45 mil­limetre width – with full func­tion range and a dis­play. The diag­nos­tics for short machine down­times was and still remains one of the most impor­tant ele­ments for users, as is the case for the con­nec­tion to var­ious automa­tion envi­ron­ments and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems.

The fact that you only needed to use one system from plan­ning to main­te­nance also helped to spur on the suc­cess of PNOZ­multi. The newest stand­alone base unit PNOZ m C0 is now only 22.5 mil­lime­tres wide – ideal for small machinery because it still has eight safe inputs and four safe semi­con­ductor out­puts with which up to four safety func­tions can be mon­i­tored up to the highest level – a truly safe ­little package of power. This gen­er­a­tion can do even more, how­ever – it can grow along with the safety require­ments. This is pos­sible through a migra­tion to the mod­ular expand­able base units.

Absolutely secure!

As the suc­cessor to the Machinery Direc­tive, the planned Machinery Reg­u­la­tion also makes demands for the secu­rity of devices. This is not a chal­lenge, how­ever: PNOZ­multi 2 is already secure. The data on the PNOZ m C0, for example, are pro­tected against unwanted access by means of a so-called secu­rity key. The ­PNOZ­multi 2 is also secure when acting as the “door guard” for access man­age­ment: in com­bi­na­tion with the reading units PITreader with RFID tech­nology.

The suc­cess story con­tinues.