Two new safety functions for COMBIVIS studio 6

News

Technology | Control & Automation

Tim Schöllmann | 01.03.2024

Monitoring of communication and measured values

Software and hardware go hand in hand at KEB Automation. New software functions are now available for both the COMBIVIS studio 6 Safety development environment and the Safety PLCs, which will further increase the safety of various applications in the future. Plant and machine manufacturers benefit, among other things, from even more versatile position monitoring - and avoid expensive machine downtimes in the mid-term.

Motion control, IEC 61131-3 project generation, wizard-guided component selection, fieldbus configuration and drive parameterisation - for all these tasks and more, KEB offers the automation software COMBIVIS studio 6, an all-round engineering tool that also features a fully integrated safety solution based on CODESYS SAFETY. This fulfils all the requirements for the development of applications with the IEC 61508 SIL3 and DIN EN ISO 13849-1 PLe safety standards.

In future, COMBIVIS studio 6 safety will have two additional functions for all users who prioritise safety. An extended version of COMBIVIS studio 6, in conjunction with new firmware for the safety PLCs from KEB, brings not only the new “External Communication Monitoring” feature but also the “Scale Verify" function. And these advantages provide both safety functionalities:

External Communication Monitoring

“The External Communication Monitoring function block monitors communication with another system such as Profinet, Ethernet or RS485. Among other things, this function can be used to check whether the content of a communicated data value (DINT) is correct,” says Sebastian Wietzorrek, application engineer at KEB. In practice, this is relevant for safe position monitoring, for example. When an external master sends a position to the controller via UDP, for instance, the position can be monitored and, if necessary, a Safe Torque Off (STO) can be triggered in a drive once a value is exceeded.

The function can also be used to check whether communication is still taking place between the PLC and the safety PLC (timeout). Communication between the PLC and a Profinet master is safely monitored and an emergency stop can be triggered if the telegram fails for a certain period of time - or if the content appears incorrect. The data structure, which includes an incremented telegram counter, a time stamp or the ID for the data channel, is generated by the input module that outputs the data value and checked in the safe control system by this block. The entire data structure is secured by means of a 32-bit CRC.

Scale Verify

The Scale Verify function block makes a significant contribution to the reliable monitoring of the machine. Specifically, measured values are checked by comparing them with a second measured value. The values originate from different signal sources. “In this way, the pressure is recorded from two signal sources, for example. If the pressure values differ, this would automatically trigger a corresponding safety function and stop the drive,” says Wietzorrek.

The new function blocks are now available in COMBIVIS.

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