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Multifunction relay simplifies machine safety

A Smartscan product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Feb 12, 2004

In its basic form, the Integron 20 directly replace almost any safety relay function.

It is more than 35 years since the first safety relay was introduced.

In those days the systems relied exclusively on relay logic to monitor and control the devices.

During that time the size of the market for conventional safety relay developed at a pace almost beyond belief.

Unfortunately, advances in technology and innovation associated with these devices did not develop at anywhere near the same speed.

Now, 35 years on very little seems to have changed.

Yes, device reliability has improved with the introduction of solid-state electronic monitoring.

Yes, the relay units have become smaller.

Yes, there are many relay types - in fact a huge range, to satisfy the broadest range of applications, from emergency stop, to gate-switch monitors, to two-hand controllers, to rundown timers and so on.

Upwards of 20 different relay units are offered by each of the major suppliers of such equipment.

But, therein lies the main problem associated with conventional safety relays: why are there so many relays, with so many functions.

This so-called advancement in safety relay development is not innovation it's just a continuation on the same old theme.

The beauty of the Integron solution is the way it turns the conventional approach on its head.

What could be simpler for the user - just one Integron 20 safety module and a suitable memory element are all that's needed to suit the majority of machine safety applications.

The Integron 20 in its basic form can directly replace almost any safety relay function including: emergency-stop (immediate and delay output options), two hand control, safety gate monitor (delay time option), light curtain, safety mat and edge monitoring.

More amazingly the same unit has enough control power to provide the functional design capacity of up to eight conventional safety relays.

By selection of suitable memory elements the unit can be used for multifunction applications such as, emergency stop with gate interlocking, press control systems, and so on.

If required the memory element software can be customised to suit specialist user applications and programmed by Smartscan's safety software engineers.

The design criteria are not limited by the ingenuity of the engineers, but only by the Integron 20's I/O capacity of 16 inputs and four outputs.

For the OEM, the Integron is the perfect solution.

Put Integron 20s on the shelf and a range of application plug-ins and its all that's needed to provide the solution for the vast majority of machine control applications.

Find out more about this article. Request a brochure, download technical specifications and request samples here.

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