Delta Announces Partnership with Codesys

Delta, a provider of indus­tri­al automa­tion solu­tions, held a press con­fer­ence at SPS IPC Dri­ves 2018 to announce its new part­ner­ship with 3S-Smart Soft­ware Solu­tion GmbH, a mem­ber of the Codesys Group and cre­ator of the mar­ket-lead­ing IEC 61131–3 indus­tri­al soft­ware Codesys. The part­ner­ship will enable Delta to make its future motion con­trol devices pro­gram­ma­ble with Codesys and offer cus­tomers across EMEA (Europe, Mid­dle East & Africa) and Asia the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sim­pli­fy the imple­men­ta­tion of Delta’s indus­tri­al automa­tion hard­ware across their operations.

Andy Liu, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Delta’s Indus­tri­al Automa­tion Busi­ness Group (IABG), said, “Our cus­tomers asked for Codesys, and we’re delight­ed to give it to them. In Europe, many of the top automa­tion play­ers use this soft­ware plat­form because it is out­stand­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Now, cus­tomers across EMEA can have Codesys in all new Delta motion sys­tems. In addi­tion, we can now also make Codesys avail­able to the large Delta cus­tomer base in Asia. We also hope this part­ner­ship will ulti­mate­ly open new doors to the Asian mar­ket for Euro­pean indus­tri­al equip­ment makers.”

With 69 R&D facil­i­ties around the world and ded­i­cat­ed indus­tri­al automa­tion R&D facil­i­ties in Italy, Ger­many, the Nether­lands, and Greater Chi­na, Delta oper­ates in close prox­im­i­ty to its Euro­pean man­u­fac­tur­ing cus­tomers. Delta also has a com­pre­hen­sive and glob­al sup­port net­work for its indus­tri­al automa­tion hard­ware plat­forms. That net­work extends through­out Asia, where many of the world’s fac­to­ries are located.

Codesys is one of the most wide­ly used man­u­fac­tur­er IEC 61131–3 devel­op­ment sys­tems on the mar­ket. Codesys offers all the func­tion­al­i­ty of a mod­ern IEC 61131–3 devel­op­ment tool includ­ing an inte­grat­ed visu­al­iza­tion fea­ture with mul­ti-client capa­bil­i­ty, inte­grat­ed con­nec­tion to all stan­dard field­bus sys­tems, motion func­tion­al­i­ty, safe­ty solu­tions, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion interfaces.

Greater efficiency through standardization

Addi­tion­al costs are gen­er­at­ed when a man­u­fac­tur­er adds a new automa­tion plat­form. By inte­grat­ing Codesys, Delta aims to reduce the engi­neer­ing costs that this involves. Patrik Hug, head of busi­ness devel­op­ment & prod­uct man­age­ment, EMEA at Delta’s IABG, said: “Switch­ing to a dif­fer­ent motion plat­form or adding a new one means you have to write new code. The goal is to reduce the ini­tial switch­ing time when adding a new plat­form. By stan­dard­iz­ing on Codesys, we are mak­ing it much eas­i­er for cus­tomers to use Delta automa­tion prod­ucts. Instead of hav­ing dif­fer­ent soft­ware to pro­gram each of their plat­forms, they will be able to write code on the same plat­form for all their Delta prod­ucts. And the great thing about Codesys is that you have an entire com­mu­ni­ty of appli­ca­tion devel­op­ers. There is a lot of exper­tise out there to draw from.”

Delta launched its new Codesys-enabled scal­able IPC, the MH2 Series at SPS IPC Dri­ves 2018. The Codesys plat­form inte­grates the con­trol func­tions of three major indus­tri­al con­trollers: pro­gram­ma­ble log­ic con­trollers (PLC), human machine inter­faces (HMI), and motion con­trol. This enhances the motion con­trol capa­bil­i­ties of the MH2 Series, result­ing in a high-speed, high-pre­ci­sion Ether­CAT motion con­trol solu­tion with periph­er­al prod­ucts. With Codesys, the MH2 Series pro­vides a user-friend­ly motion con­trol inter­face fea­tur­ing advanced motion con­trol func­tions that allow for up to 64-axes syn­chro­nous con­trol of AC Ser­vo Dri­ves ASDA-A2‑E Series, Stan­dard Com­pact Dri­ves MS300 Series, and Remote I/O Mod­ules R1-EC via EtherCAT.