The May technology evening was moved out a day to accommodate the public holiday on 1 May and the topic of IO-Link attracted an excellent attendance at the Durban Country Club, in spite of the disruption to traffic in central Durban due to strike action by municipal workers.
Hennie Prinsloo (left) thanks Robert de Scande for his presentation.
Robert de Scande, SICK Automation’s product manager for Presence Detection and Motion Control Sensors, presented to us and provided the meeting with background information about IO-Link, and how it may be used in conjunction with existing bus systems. He gave examples of how it can benefit the factory automation industry by making information that is already available in many plant-mounted devices available to users at low cost. A further advantage is that the master can be programmed so that if a field device is replaced, the new one will take the required characteristics set by the master instead of having to set it in a workshop environment before installing it in the plant.
Jared Sigamoney (left) of UKZN, the winner of the Student Award Scheme for the 2nd semester 2018, receiving his certificate from Hennie Prinsloo.
Robert showed the meeting that not only SICK, but many other well-known device manufacturers, incorporated IO-Link capability in their products. In fact it is quite possible that devices that are already installed in our plant have IO-Link capability unknown to their users because of their compatibility with existing signal communication systems.
Robert concluded his presentation with a live demonstration of two IO-Link devices, showing the type of additional data that can come from a basic inductive proximity switch and a colour scanner.
The branch thanks SICK for the kind sponsorship of this evening.
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