The rapid growth of the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) continues. To-date, there are now 1195 ETG member companies from 48 countries – an increase of 314 members per year.
Most ETG members are located in Germany, where EtherCAT originated, followed by the United States, Japan and China/Taiwan. A large percentage of the members actively invest in EtherCAT technology: altogether more than 900 implementation kits have been sold. The large variety of EtherCAT controllers, drives, I/O and sensors was mirrored at the ETG booth in hall 6 of the SPS/IPC/Drives show in Nuremberg, Germany – over 200 different devices being shown there. Among the exhibits was a multivendor demo with 30 drives from 20 different manufacturers, which are all operated synchronously within a single EtherCAT network – a potential world record. Control systems from 17 different vendors were shown in another demo application at the show.
All in all, more than 50 vendors are either already shipping EtherCAT servo drives or have announced such products in public. Over 70 vendors offer EtherCAT master devices such as PLCs, PC-based controls, CNC and embedded controllers, using more than 15 different realtime operating systems to implement them. With I/O devices, there is also a large selection: more than 30 vendors have EtherCAT devices in their I/O portfolio.
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