Pilz provides various tools to meet the customer’s needs for communication, bus systems and decentralised peripherals. The tools are suitable for most tasks involving automation components of the Pilz brand. For example, whether you are working with the small PNOZmulti safety relay at an elementary machine, with the universal PSS4000 or with the versatile PSSuniversal PLC, we attempt to take account of any end customer system tool requirements. In this connection, Pilz is able to fall back on an integrated tool concept consisting of different tools which have been optimally aligned with one another for unique operation and high efficiency of use of the automation components of the Pilz brand.
The approach requires that the tool types can be used for the various stages during the creation of the safety concept and of the safety related software. Control projects from Pilz are thus able to benefit from a platform-wide, application type programme. The application type LibCoder.pro can be used for all-peripheral projects such as encoder applications along an associated servo drive.
he growth in complexity of today’s control systems, for example as regards flexibility of plant and servicing, is making us think more about the relationship between the various components of the system. As a control system designer, you have to decide on the design of the control system when the system as such is in operation – a task known as online engineering. http://www.pilz.com
This approach can be realised by the control system thanks to the decentralised I/O systems, the so-called PSSuniversal decentralised peripherals from Pilz. The pilot project, for example – which in the past had been labour intensively implemented on the first day of hot commissioning – has now become quite simple. A typical service position was installed at roof level on a car body: a PSS programmable control system type 3060 together with bus coupler type 3003 and 3IO/16P type 3016 speed module.
The term hybrid system is also appropriate due to the combination of centralised and decentralised switching levels. Here, controllers and I/O systems communicate with hierarchical higher-level controllers (PLCs) via a centralised or decentralised higher-level bus node. Market demands for genuine decentralised systems are based on a number of requirements.
The main factors are: price/customer benefit, configuration flexibility, modularity and technology. Apart from cost-effective installation and high availability, the replacement of intelligent field devices ranging from small control units to large distributed I/Os, the elimination of additional controllers and input/output modules and a reduction of the bus layout involving switch segments as well are additional benefits.
There are major differences between centralised and decentralised I/O systems. In practice, a mixture of both concepts is used. The concept of a centralised I/O system is already quite clearly identified by its name. However, in practice, large outstations are designed to be readily accessible. For cost and practical reasons, additional I/O cards and controllers are often inserted at different points in an outstation. The term decentralised I/O system is used when the majority of the I/O modules or intelligent field devices are not co-ordinated at a central point such as a PLC or lowest level bus node but communicate directly with several controllers or controllers of different manufacturers. http://www.pilz.com