Programmable gateway and universal I/O module

Indus­try 4.0 calls for ful­ly dig­i­talised process­es that extend all the way to sensor/actuator lev­el. To sim­pli­fy the real­i­sa­tion of intel­li­gent net­work­ing, Bürk­ert Flu­id Con­trol Sys­tems devel­oped EDIP – the Effi­cient Device Inte­gra­tion Plat­form. This opens up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cus­tomised solu­tions that can func­tion as a stand-alone or autonomous sub­sys­tem, as well as detailed device diag­nos­tic capa­bil­i­ties. The plat­form is now being expand­ed to include two new com­po­nents: With the I/O mod­ule ME44, var­i­ous sen­sors and actu­a­tors can be inte­grat­ed into the EDIP envi­ron­ment. The field­bus gate­way ME43 allows sim­ple inte­gra­tion at process con­trol lev­el with the help of stan­dard field­bus­es and Indus­tri­al Eth­er­net. Intu­itive graph­i­cal pro­gram­ming allows autonomous sub­sys­tems to be realised quick­ly with­out the need for inter­ven­tion in the con­trol sys­tem. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly advan­ta­geous when exten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion is required, for exam­ple, in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal field. The user receives a scal­able, cus­tomised dig­i­tal com­plete solu­tion from a sin­gle source.

Programmable gateway

To inte­grate EDIP at process con­trol lev­el, Bürk­ert pro­vides the gate­way ME43, which com­mu­ni­cates via Profinet, EtherNet/IP, Profibus DP, Mod­bus TCP or Ether­CAT (Image 2). It also serves as a cen­tral con­trol unit for any EDIP device and offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of graph­i­cal pro­gram­ming for automat­ing the sub­sys­tem. In each case, the gate­way trans­mits up to 128 input and out­put vari­ables. Option­al upward or down­ward cable out­lets sim­pli­fy instal­la­tions in cramped con­trol cabinets.

Universal I/O modules

With the I/O mod­ule ME44 from Bürk­ert, var­i­ous sen­sors and actu­a­tors can be inte­grat­ed in an EDIP sys­tem. The mod­ules process stan­dard sig­nals and are com­pat­i­ble with 2- and 3‑wire sen­sors as well as mechan­i­cal lim­it switch­es. Some chan­nels can also be con­fig­ured as fre­quen­cy inputs, which allow the user to adjust them indi­vid­u­al­ly to suit require­ments. Expand­ing the mod­ules is easy as they sim­ply snap togeth­er using a 3‑slot back­plane with­out the need for tools. Eas­i­ly remov­able ter­mi­nal block con­nec­tors for quick, uncom­pli­cat­ed assem­bly and the use of LED indi­ca­tors to dis­play short cir­cuits and cable breaks help stream­line instal­la­tion and main­te­nance work.