Programmable automation controller leads the way

A GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms UK product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 16, 2003

GE Fanuc Automation has introduced a powerful family of programmable automation controllers, at the heart of its revolutionary new PACSystems.

GE Fanuc Automation has introduced a powerful family of programmable automation controllers, at the heart of its revolutionary new PACSystems.

The innovative PACSystems family features a single control engine and a universal programming environment.

This revolutionary approach provides portability across multiple hardware platforms to deliver a true convergence of control choices.

It offers customers many other benefits including improved performance, higher productivity, and an easy migration path for existing GE Fanuc PLC users.

The new GE Fanuc PACSystems family contains fully integrated control systems comprising a control engine, award-winning Cimplicity Machine Edition software and hardware platforms.

The control engine is built on a standard embedded architecture and uses recognised commercial operating systems.

This makes the engine portable to multiple platforms, allowing users to choose the hardware and programming language that best suits each particular application.

The system supports distributed I/O through industry-standard communication protocols which include Ethernet, Profibus, DeviceNet and Genius networks.

"PACSystems represents a revolutionary change in the control industry, one that enables control convergence rather than integration of disparate parts and pieces", explained John Pritchard, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Automation Equipment, GE Fanuc Automation Europe.

"With one engine, coupled with a single development tool, users can take advantage of a powerful engineering environment for multiple applications.

Through this innovation, the GE Fanuc PACSystems family addresses major engineering and business issues such as higher productivity and communications openness.

This flexible technology can help users boost the overall performance of their automation systems, reduce engineering costs, and significantly decrease concerns regarding short- and long-term migration and platform longevity".

The PACSystems family provides a seamless migration path to improved control functionality.

This ensures protection of a user's investment in both I/O and applications development, enabling easy upgrading from existing GE Fanuc controller systems.

The PACSystems controllers operate with almost the entire existing range of GE Fanuc I/O, thus already offering over 100 variations of I/O hardware.

The use of GE Fanuc's well established software, Cimplicity Machine Edition, provides the universal engineering development environment for programming, configuration and diagnostics.

With tag-based programming, a library of reusable code and a test edit mode for previewing applications, Cimplicity Machine Edition is a user-friendly environment that can increase design flexibility and improve engineering efficiency and productivity.

Craig Resnick, Director of Research for ARC Advisory Group, commented, "The PLC has evolved by incorporating open standard interfaces, multi-domain functionality, distributed modular architectures, and modern software capabilities integrated as turnkey automation solutions.

The new PAC concept will play a major role in plant and factory automation, today and in the future".

The first GE Fanuc PACSystems controller platform to be released is the high performance RX7i.

Offering four-times the speed of existing PLC backplanes and up to 10Mbyte of memory usable for programming and documentation storage, the PACSystems RX7i is VME64 based, supports all standard VME modules including Series 90T-70 I/O, and incorporates industry-leading technology from VMIC, a GE Fanuc company.

GE Fanuc plans to release additional platforms throughout the year.