This month's issue comes full of international news: Italy concludes a successful workshop; PI Southern Africa is set to exhibit at Electra Mining Africa 2020; PITC UK says goodbye to one of their founding members who is heading for retirement; and the IO-Link China Community is officially established.
Ethernet-APL (Advanced Physical Layer) improves the value creation of your process system through the use of Internet technology and high-speed communication down to the field level. As a result, the installation, configuration and maintenance of instruments and automation technology are greatly simplified.
At this year’s PI Konferenz in Frankfurt, a user complained that approximately 90% of the data accrued in today’s production process remains untapped. PROFIBUS & PROFINET International is tackling this problem by standardizing the interfaces and data coming from devices, cells, or machines.
Understanding how the ‘black channel principle’ ensures safety-related messages get from their source to their destination and IO-Link’s role in simplifying the sensor-to-cloud connection are two trends to watch in 2020 and beyond.
The variety of domestic Chinese automation vendors supplying devices with a PROFINET interface has exploded. This was recently exhibited by PI-China at the China International Industry Fair (CIIF) in Shanghai in September.
November brings us half a dozen exciting new products –many from the machine-vision sector. Emerson, Eye Vision Technology, Festo, Leuze, Micro-Epsilon, and TSN Systems all announce their fresh new offerings.
Two successful events took place in Germany in September. A PROFIsafe user workshop hosted the PROFIsafe Working Group, 12 exhibitors, speakers and 33 workshop participants at HMS. Also, over 90 representatives from 43 international businesses gathered in Bad Soden for the latest IO-Link interoperability workshop.
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Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) are functional devices in automation environments. They provide graphics-based visualization for both monitoring and controlling machines. Generally, some HMI designs are more efficient than others. This Tech Tip covers important considerations to design a successful HMI interface.
