Bundled competencies for smart production

When two com­pa­nies head­quar­tered in the inno­va­tion loca­tion of East West­phalia com­bine their exper­tise, this can only be ben­e­fi­cial for their cus­tomers, com­pa­nies in the indus­try. As in this case, in which the SMART Safe­ty Sys­tem from BERNSTEIN com­mu­ni­cates with con­trollers from WAGO and thus pro­vides the cus­tomer with all data and infor­ma­tion about their pro­duc­tion process dig­i­tal­ly, quick­ly and clear­ly, for exam­ple, on an HMI or a web browser.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the two com­pa­nies came about in 2019 dur­ing the “Pro­duc­tion and IT” trade show in Nord­horn. As a provider of sys­tem solu­tions for process and indus­tri­al automa­tion, WAGO is always look­ing for ideas and inno­va­tions for its cus­tomers. In this con­text, the approach of read­ing and fur­ther pro­cess­ing data and infor­ma­tion about the safe­ty tech­nol­o­gy com­po­nents via IO-Link was also inter­est­ing — a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the WAGO con­trollers already offer. And BERNSTEIN has also been fol­low­ing this path of data pro­cess­ing via IO-Link for some time with its SMART Safe­ty Sys­tem for safe­guard­ing machines and sys­tems. The inter­face of coop­er­a­tion between the two com­pa­nies was created.

“BERNSTEIN sup­plies the safe­ty tech­nol­o­gy to safe­guard machines and sys­tems, as well as the asso­ci­at­ed data. WAGO brings in the con­trol com­po­nents to dig­i­tal­ize and auto­mate process­es. Togeth­er, we offer cus­tomers the all-around care­free pack­age from the com­bined knowl­edge of both com­pa­nies, bun­dled into one com­plete system.”

- Philip Aumann, Head of Prod­uct Management

Safety technology from BERNSTEIN

 BERNSTEIN pre­sent­ed the first com­po­nent of a SMART Safe­ty sys­tem back in 2017 with the SRF (Safe­ty RFID) non-con­tact safe­ty sen­sor. The SRF mon­i­tors mov­able guards, such as flaps, doors or pro­tec­tive grids. This par­tic­u­lar­ly small sen­sor pro­tects employ­ees from injury by switch­ing off machines and sys­tems or not even start­ing them up until the guard is prop­er­ly closed.

The Safe­ty Emer­gency Unit, or SEU for short, was then fol­lowed by an elec­tron­ic solu­tion to inte­grate an emer­gency stop switch into the series con­nec­tion of the SRF sensors.

Togeth­er with the SCR DI safe­ty relay, these three com­po­nents form the com­plete pack­age of smart pro­tec­tion for machines and sys­tems. Dur­ing devel­op­ment, BERNSTEIN placed par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the patent­ed DCD diag­nos­tic sys­tem, which pro­vides com­pre­hen­sive data on each con­nect­ed device. The daisy chain diag­nos­tic sys­tem pro­vides a wealth of infor­ma­tion that can be used to make machines and plants more effi­cient by avoid­ing down­time. Data from each com­po­nent in the safe­ty chain is read out and made avail­able via IO-Link.

IO-Link is the first glob­al­ly stan­dard­ized IO tech­nol­o­gy (IEC 61131–9) for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with sen­sors and also actu­a­tors. The pow­er­ful point-to-point com­mu­ni­ca­tion is based on the well-known 3‑wire sen­sor and actu­a­tor con­nec­tion with­out any addi­tion­al require­ments for the cable mate­r­i­al. IO-Link is there­fore not a field­bus, but the evo­lu­tion­ary fur­ther devel­op­ment of the pre­vi­ous, proven con­nec­tion tech­nol­o­gy for sen­sors and actu­a­tors*. With these prop­er­ties, the tech­nol­o­gy is ide­al­ly suit­ed for trans­mit­ting diag­nos­tic infor­ma­tion from the safe­ty sys­tem to the controller.

Control components from WAGO

The con­trollers on the mod­u­lar WAGO I/O SYSTEM fur­ther process the safe­ty tech­nol­o­gy data and deliv­er it to the cus­tomer’s screen in a scal­able and user-friend­ly man­ner. In addi­tion to the net­work and field­bus inter­faces, they sup­port dig­i­tal and ana­log mod­ules as well as spe­cial mod­ules of the 750/753 Series.

The inter­faces and inte­grat­ed switch enable wiring in line and star topolo­gies. An inte­grat­ed web serv­er pro­vides the user with con­fig­u­ra­tion options and sta­tus infor­ma­tion of the con­troller and the appli­ca­tion. Typ­i­cal appli­ca­tions are found in the process indus­try and in build­ing automa­tion in the field of mechan­i­cal and plant engineering.