In position with IO-Link

Bus-capa­ble posi­tion indi­ca­tors and actu­a­tors from Siko are vir­tu­al­ly indis­pens­able in machine con­struc­tion today. They help make size changeover process­es more effi­cient and reli­able, thus enabling the flex­i­ble con­ver­sion of mod­ern pro­duc­tion sys­tems for ever-small­er batch sizes.

Regard­less if a machine con­ver­sion is per­formed man­u­al­ly with posi­tion indi­ca­tor mon­i­tor­ing, or in a ful­ly auto­mat­ed man­ner with an actu­a­tor, feed­back on the posi­tion­ing sta­tus to the machine con­trol sys­tem max­i­mizes process reli­a­bil­i­ty for size changeovers and opti­mizes set­up times. This pre­vents incor­rect set­tings, which in turn pre­vents waste and dam­age to tools. In short, it boosts effi­cien­cy and reduces set­up times.

Plug & Play thanks to IO-Link

The key pre­req­ui­site for tak­ing advan­tage of the improve­ment poten­tial offered by intel­li­gent size changeover is ensur­ing effi­cient and reli­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the machine con­trol sys­tem. This is why the smart AP10 posi­tion indi­ca­tor and the AG03/1 actu­a­tor are now also avail­able with the inno­v­a­tive IO-Link interface.

This inter­face enables fast and cost-effec­tive inte­gra­tion via a point-to-point con­nec­tion using uncom­pli­cat­ed I/O con­nec­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Thanks to the open, man­u­fac­tur­er-inde­pen­dent stan­dard of the IO-Link inter­face, con­ve­nient inte­gra­tion options are avail­able for machine con­trol sys­tems from all lead­ing providers. IO-Link Mas­ter Islands can be used for the mod­u­lar net­work­ing of sev­er­al AP10 posi­tion indi­ca­tors. This dras­ti­cal­ly reduces com­plex­i­ty and wiring over­heads and short­ens com­mis­sion­ing times. The straight­for­ward wiring is com­bined with addi­tion­al diag­nos­tic fea­tures to improve ser­vice­abil­i­ty and reduce down­times in the event of errors. The IO-Link Mas­ter makes it pos­si­ble to read para­me­ter data from a field device, store it, and load the data on a new, iden­ti­cal device when the old one is replaced – even while the process is still run­ning and with­out the need for any spe­cial expertise.

Seamless communication all the way to the Cloud

In the Indus­try 4.0 or Smart Fac­to­ry envi­ron­ment, it is often not enough to exchange pure process data; rather, com­mu­ni­ca­tion must also make it pos­si­ble to select val­ues for diag­nos­tic pur­pos­es, like final stage tem­per­a­ture, motor cur­rent, and var­i­ous volt­age val­ues. Fur­ther­more, the elec­tron­ic type plate offers clear iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the unit type, as well as the ser­i­al num­ber and the hard­ware and soft­ware ver­sions, which makes it eas­i­er to sched­ule ad-hoc main­te­nance inter­vals. Siko’s posi­tion indi­ca­tors and actu­a­tors pro­vide this infor­ma­tion via the IO-Link inter­face, from where it can be used for tasks such as con­di­tion mon­i­tor­ing and pre­dic­tive main­te­nance in cen­tral­ized high­er-lev­el sys­tems, all the way to sys­tems uti­liz­ing cloud ser­vices. Since the IO-Link stan­dard is open, a mul­ti­tude of net­work com­po­nents from var­i­ous man­u­fac­tur­ers is avail­able to enable seam­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the field lev­el all the way to the cloud in a straight­for­ward and secure manner.

Manual positioning – designed for ergonomics

The AP10 posi­tion indi­ca­tor ensures that prod­uct and size changeovers are per­formed safe­ly and ergonom­i­cal­ly. Set­points, actu­al posi­tion val­ues and the posi­tion­ing sta­tus are exchanged with the machine con­trol sys­tem, mak­ing man­u­al spin­dle adjust­ment a mon­i­tored process. The AP10S ver­sion with an exter­nal­ly con­nectable mag­net­ic sen­sor can even mea­sure and dis­play lin­ear posi­tions with a pre­ci­sion of +/- 35 µm. This makes oper­a­tor guid­ance and process mon­i­tor­ing extreme­ly easy to imple­ment for both lin­ear slides and thread­ed spin­dles. One sig­nif­i­cant new ele­ment of the AP10 is the invert­ed back­lit LCD dis­play. The back­light­ing ensures that the posi­tion val­ues are eas­i­ly leg­i­ble, even in places that are dif­fi­cult to see in or in low light con­di­tions. In addi­tion to the direc­tion­al arrows on the LCD, the AP10 posi­tion indi­ca­tor also pro­vides clear visu­al user guid­ance via two dual-col­or sta­tus LEDs. These not only sig­nal the posi­tion­ing sta­tus (InPos or Out­Pos) but also indi­cate the required rota­tion­al direc­tion for direct access to the desired point.

All-in-one solution for confined installation spaces

Even if the axle spac­ing is just 37 mm, there is still ample room for two AG03/1 dri­ves to work unob­struct­ed in any way, which makes them ide­al for use with axles that are very close to each oth­er. The com­pact hous­ing of the actu­a­tor, with a height of only 80 mm, inte­grates the posi­tion mea­sur­ing sys­tem, all the elec­tron­ic con­trol equip­ment, and the IO-Link inter­face. Here, the absolute mag­net­ic mea­sur­ing sys­tem, with its 1,600 steps per rev­o­lu­tion, pro­vides posi­tion val­ues with a high res­o­lu­tion – in fact, this data is pro­vid­ed over the entire trav­el path of ±6,250 rev­o­lu­tions. Ref­er­ence move­ments upon dri­ve start­up are now a thing of the past. Fur­ther­more, the mag­net­ic mea­sur­ing sys­tem has proven to be resis­tant to dirt accu­mu­la­tion, mois­ture, shock, and vibrations.

Easy mounting with a hollow shaft

Just like all oth­er Siko posi­tion indi­ca­tors, the AP10 and AG03/1 also fea­ture a hol­low shaft, guar­an­tee­ing the eas­i­est assem­bly pos­si­ble for stan­dard adjustable axles. The size and dis­tance dimen­sions of the torque sup­port ensure instal­la­tion com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with the world’s best-sell­ing Siko meter DA09S. This means that it is pos­si­ble to switch from man­u­al adjust­ment with a mechan­i­cal posi­tion indi­ca­tor to mon­i­tored size changeover or to full automa­tion with­out chang­ing the machine frame. Due to the high pro­tec­tion class of IP65 and a hol­low shaft made of stain­less steel, the AP10 and AG03/1 are also suit­able for appli­ca­tions in the food indus­try, bev­er­age pro­duc­tion or the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sector.