Safety specification is fit for Sercos

Sercos International is to adopt CIP Safety as its functional safety protocol for Sercos.

Sercos International is to adopt CIP Safety as its functional safety protocol for Sercos.

ODVA, for its part, will extend "The CIP safety specification" to include safety profiles for Sercos devices.

SI, for its part, will develop the Sercos III network adaptation to utilise CIP Safety.

SI and ODVA, jointly, will develop and establish conformance testing for devices implementing CIP Safety on Sercos to help ensure compliance with the collective body of specifications and enable interoperability of these devices in multi-vendor systems.

This action is consistent with the desires of industry to have a single, worldwide network protocol for safety applications.

Further, the joint support of CIP Safety by ODVA and SI will facilitate technical and market synergies for users and vendors of functional safety networks.

"Sercos interface is the world-leading digital drive interface with more than 20 years history and worldwide acceptance in all servo-driven motion applications", states Peter Lutz, Managing Director of Sercos International.

"Using CIP Safety as the functional safety protocol on Sercos III, SI's new generation industrial Ethernet network, opens up completely new possibilities and leads to a greater versatility for applications with safety requirements".

"This provides significant benefits not only to the Sercos users and vendors but for the worldwide safety community".

"CIP Safety stands alone as the world's only media-independent, truly open network protocol for functional safety", states Katherine Voss, Executive Director of ODVA.

"Adoption of CIP Safety by Sercos International will provide users of Sercos technology with a functional safety solution that meets industry's growing requirement for seamless integration of safety networks with the overall network architecture".

The responsible technical working group within SI has already started to extend and adapt its initial "Sercos safety" concept - published and approved by TUV Rheinland in November 2005 - to CIP Safety.

SI and ODVA expect that the enhancements to their respective specifications to encompass the adaptation of Sercos to CIP Safety will be published during 2007.

They also expect that first device implementations will be released by the end of 2007.

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