More efficient diagnostics via IO-Link Safety

Essen­tially, IO-Link Safety is a tech­nology that enables the quick, easy inte­gra­tion of safety sen­sors and actu­a­tors. This offers par­tic­ular advan­tages in com­plex plants, such as exten­sive con­veyor sys­tems.

Safe standard for industrial communication

Any man­u­fac­turer and system builder that develops and pro­duces large-scale con­veyor sys­tems knows how time-con­suming the wiring can be. Each sta­tion – whether it’s an emer­gency stop button, a push­button or a status indi­cator on an IO-Link light for example – usu­ally requires sep­a­rate wiring to con­trol cab­i­nets or decen­tralised mod­ules and a cor­re­sponding eval­u­a­tion by the con­troller (stan­dard or safety). This level of com­plexity not only slows the project down, but also increases costs, cre­ates more poten­tial error sources and makes main­te­nance more dif­fi­cult. In con­trast, IO-Link Safety saves machine builders time by using a single cable con­nec­tion, capable of han­dling both com­mu­ni­ca­tion and safety. That’s because IO-Link Safety can dras­ti­cally reduce the instal­la­tion time — and there­fore also the engi­neering work.

Faster assembly for a faster flow of goods

Con­veyors, for example, ide­ally need to trans­port mate­rial quickly and effi­ciently, i.e. without any major dis­rup­tion. This means that man­u­fac­turers, system builders and oper­a­tors of con­veyor sys­tems are often under con­sid­er­able time pres­sure because the con­veyors must be up and run­ning quickly, while at the same time pro­duc­tion logis­tics must remain secured during oper­a­tion. Strict require­ments that IO-Link Safety meets: with plug-and-play wiring and a range of up to 20 metres from the IO-Link Safety Master to the IO-Link Safety Devices – IOLS sen­sors and/or IOLS con­trol units panels – in the field. Appli­ca­tions can be brought into ser­vice more quickly thanks to M12 plug-in con­nec­tors and sim­pli­fied device con­fig­u­ra­tion. If the con­trol unit PIT­gatebox IOLS is used as an IOLS device with a point-to-point con­nec­tion to the Master, the range can be even greater. This makes it much easier to design the layout of con­veyor sys­tems, for example, and frees inte­gra­tors from the typ­ical infra­struc­tural con­straints of hard-wired safety devices.

Such a high degree of flex­i­bility in the infra­struc­ture sim­pli­fies layout plan­ning con­sid­er­ably, as it is freed from the tra­di­tional lim­i­ta­tions of hard-wired safety sys­tems. Another advan­tage is that the IO-Link Safety Master can also be used in rugged envi­ron­ments thanks to IP67 and IP69K pro­tec­tion – in met­al­working for example, where dust or swarf are com­mon­place.

Benefits of IO-Link Safety in a nutshell 

IO-Link Safety – Systematically more efficient

In many cases, plant and machinery also require safety switches or safety locking devices to pro­tect both human and machine. IO-Link Safety enables seam­less inte­gra­tion of such safe sen­sors in the field. In the Pilz IO-Link Safety system, for example, the sen­sors con­nected via the IO-Link Safety con­trol unit PIT­gatebox offer addi­tional advan­tages: via IO-Link Safety, the status of the gates and pro­tec­tion devices – such as “open” or “closed” – is trans­mitted cen­trally to the higher-level safety con­troller. This enables the plant to restart more quickly and the reac­tion time to be opti­mised when it comes to main­te­nance. When users employ the safety locking device PSEN­m­lock and the con­trol unit PIT­gatebox from Pilz’s IO-Link Safety system, they can imple­ment pre­dic­tive main­te­nance – by recording oper­ating hours – and advanced diag­nos­tics. This is because users can easily record the status mes­sages from the safety locking device via the system.

How to connect control units and sensors more quickly?

This rel­a­tively new tech­nology, which enables con­trol units and sen­sors in the field to be con­nected quickly and easily, pro­vides tan­gible sup­port for users. It makes imme­diate diag­nos­tics pos­sible on emer­gency stop switches, push­but­tons and LED indi­ca­tors. As such it enables users to react in an ad hoc manner should faults occur. IO-Link Safety always has cost opti­mi­sa­tion in mind. The IO-Link Safety Master from Pilz requires just a single port to con­nect to the con­trol unit PIT­gatebox avail­able within the system. If addi­tional sen­sors such as safety switches or guard locking devices are then inte­grated in series to this con­trol unit, all com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­tinues via this single IO-Link-Safety port – it’s clear and there’s no need for addi­tional wiring. The fact that even com­plex plants can be com­mis­sioned much more quickly is a fur­ther eco­nomic advan­tage. This is because IO-Link Safety sim­pli­fies instal­la­tion and makes the com­mu­ni­ca­tion struc­ture less error-prone. The reduced com­mis­sioning time is just one aspect; the ability to exchange devices quickly is another. Anyone using IO-Link Safety can exchange all devices almost imme­di­ately. IO-Link Safety devices can iden­tify them­selves auto­mat­i­cally; stored para­me­ters are trans­ferred auto­mat­i­cally. This fea­ture makes them easier to exchange. And reduces storage costs, as fewer product types are required.

Optimised fault diagnostics via IO-Link Safety

Con­trol units enable com­mands for safety gate sys­tems such as acti­vate, stop or reset. Par­tic­u­larly in the case of exten­sive, large-scale plants, it should be pos­sible to acti­vate or con­trol indi­vidual machine func­tions directly at the point of use. That’s because, in this case, swift action can only be effec­tive if it is part of an imme­diate, coor­di­nated response. It is there­fore ben­e­fi­cial to con­nect con­trol units in series and also have them inte­grated via IO-Link Safety. Without IO-Link Safety, the con­trol units must be wired and analysed indi­vid­u­ally. The dif­fer­ence lies in the series con­nec­tion of the con­trol units and in the data diag­nos­tics. Without IO-Link Safety, data such as whether or not an emer­gency stop has been oper­ated is avail­able. With IO-Link Safety, you have access to sig­nif­i­cantly more diag­nostic data. For example, infor­ma­tion on the status of the device in the field – such as whether it is flashing or lit – or, in the event of an error, the error code or, for example, the product name and ID. This infor­ma­tion on the device status tells the oper­ator whether the machinery has stopped, for example. So it shows them what to do. With Pilz, it is also pos­sible to carry out cen­tralised diag­nos­tics on all con­trol units PIT­gatebox, for example. This means that the infor­ma­tion is dis­played cen­trally on the visu­al­i­sa­tion system and not just on the plant.

Con­clu­sion: As pro­duc­tion lines become increas­ingly com­plex, con­ven­tional wiring and safety archi­tec­tures are often unable to keep up. With IO-Link Safety, the market has a system that meets this require­ment.