Switches for industrial communication applications

The future of indus­tri­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion lies in a holis­tic approach – in a net­work. This brings about unin­ter­rupt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion right down to pro­duc­tion lev­el and your machines and sys­tems. When set­ting up these com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, it is impor­tant to con­nect devices to one anoth­er to cre­ate net­works, and to trans­mit data as effi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble. Seam­less Eth­er­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion sim­pli­fies and accel­er­ates process­es, cre­ates trans­paren­cy and reduces costs.

The new Eth­er­net Switch­es from Wei­d­müller have been specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped for small indus­tri­al net­works. They offer secure and reli­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Eth­er­net-based machines and sys­tems as well as allow­ing for the con­nec­tion of Eth­er­net devices to a high­er-lev­el network.

The unman­aged Plug-and-Play switch­es mean that net­work con­nec­tions can be direct­ly extend­ed to include mul­ti­ple devices. The switch­es with 5 to 24 ports allow users to tap into the ben­e­fits offered by stan­dard­ised Eth­er­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion and indus­tri­al automa­tion technology.

Depend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar ver­sion, the switch­es are fit­ted with a num­ber of com­bin­able cop­per or fibre-optic inter­faces, mean­ing that dif­fer­ent media can be used and large dis­tances cov­ered. All Eth­er­net switch­es have an indus­tri­al IP30 met­al hous­ing with inte­grat­ed clip-in foot for easy instal­la­tion on the ter­mi­nal rail (TS35). The inte­grat­ed clip-in foot has been spe­cial­ly opti­mised for sim­ple instal­la­tion. The stur­dy hous­ing design and the high port den­si­ty com­bined with par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pact dimen­sions means that the space in the con­trol cab­i­net can be put to opti­mal use. This applies in par­tic­u­lar to the 5‑port switch, one of the small­est switch­es in terms of den­si­ty and a switch that is par­tic­u­lar­ly well-suit­ed to the tight spaces in con­trol cab­i­nets. The largest con­fig­u­ra­tion lev­el con­tains 24 ports.

In addi­tion to its high den­si­ty, the switch is also char­ac­terised by its large tem­per­a­ture range. The switch­es can be used in envi­ron­ments from –40 to +75 °C. This allows for oper­a­tion both with­in pro­duc­tion and in the field. In line with the mot­to “an LED for each port”, the inte­grat­ed LEDs pro­vide a sim­ple dis­play of the speed and sta­tus of the port.

Flexible and future-proof with SFP slots

Whether mul­ti-mode or sin­gle-mode, 500 metre or any­where up to 20 km – the SFP slots help guar­an­tee flex­i­ble use. SFP stands for Small Form Fac­tor Plug-In, and these slots make it pos­si­ble to com­bine net­work com­po­nents such as switch­es with opti­cal cables. This allows them to con­vert elec­tri­cal Giga­bit sig­nals to opti­cal sig­nals and vice ver­sa. To do so, the match­ing trans­ceiv­er sim­ply needs to be plugged in. It is there­fore also pos­si­ble to change the tech­nol­o­gy at a lat­er point in time.

The wire­speed-com­pat­i­ble switch­es sup­port auto-nego­ti­a­tion, which is a pro­ce­dure where­by two con­nect­ed Eth­er­net ports auto­mat­i­cal­ly deter­mine and con­fig­ure the max­i­mum pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion rate. The inte­grat­ed auto-cross­ing func­tion also ensures more sim­ple instal­la­tion while also pre­vent­ing error sources as there is no longer any need for crossover cables. The switch­es with this stan­dard detect the paired trans­mis­sion and recep­tion lines and auto­mat­i­cal­ly and cor­rect­ly assign the pair internally.

The mod­ules have input cur­rent lim­i­ta­tion and reverse polar­i­ty pro­tec­tion. The Eco Line switch­es are con­nect­ed via the remov­able 3 or 4‑pin plug-in con­nec­tors. The com­pre­hen­sive range con­tains Fast Eth­er­net and Giga­bit vari­ants as well as PoE mod­els with 802.3 af.  Most vari­ants have a redun­dant pow­er input of 24 VDC. The 5 and 8‑port cop­per mod­els can also be oper­at­ed with a 24 VAC pow­er sup­ply, mak­ing them suit­able for use in build­ing automation.

Thanks to their inter­na­tion­al approvals and con­for­mi­ty cer­tifi­cates in accor­dance with CE and UL, the Eth­er­net switch­es are suit­able for indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions all over the world. The key ben­e­fits of the unman­aged switch­es include their good price-to-per­for­mance ratio as well as their par­tic­u­lar­ly space-sav­ing design.