Sercos International, supplier of the Sercos automation bus, posted a record number of participants at the 15th Sercos PlugFest, which took place at Schneider Electric Automation in Marktheidenfeld, Germany from May 20 to 21. Approximately 30 participants tested 25 products. These included nine master devices, such as CNCs, motion controls, PLCs, as well as 16 slave devices (including servo drives, gateways to IO-Link, AS-i and SSI, pneumatic valve terminals and decentralized I/O peripherals in various versions).
The Sercos/Ethercat Bridge from Cannon-Automata was included in the test for the first time. It provides the opportunity to connect Sercos and Ethercat masters and to transmit data bidirectionally in real-time in heterogeneous real-time Ethernet communication structures. During the PlugFest, master-slave combinations were tested using a prescribed test list. Additionally, interoperability tests were performed using various multi-device test structures, each with more than 40 slave devices. In addition, the Institute for Control Engineering of Machine Tools and Manufacturing Units (ISW) at Stuttgart University and the Esslingen-based Steinbeis Transfer Center supported conformity tests with the test tools from Sercos International.
“Last year we obtained feedback from the Sercos community in order to make the PlugFests even more attractive. The implementation is reflected not only in the participant numbers but also in the constantly growing number of Sercos-capable products,” says Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International.
The 16th PlugFest will take place in October 2015. For more info, visit http://www.sercos.org