Automotive and food manufacturers need to flexibly change the layouts of production lines in order to produce products with low volumes and numerous variants (low volume high mix) as well as to cope with short product life cycles. Functional safety systems stop production lines and equipment to protect people from potential hazards, such as robots. With classic safety controllers, however, the safety system of an entire line must be checked even if only part of it is changed. Due to the increased use of robots and a lack of experienced safety administrators, there is a growing need for safety systems that are easy to install and maintain.

Omron has developed the NX series safety network controllers for this purpose. They make it possible to easily implement safety systems for large production lines with industrial robots as well as for production systems that require high-speed control. As these controllers provide modular safety control, there is no need to stop the entire production line for maintenance or layout changes. Automatic programming of safety systems, offline simulation and an online function test for checking safety programs reduce the time from planning to verification of functional safety. In addition, the logging of safety data ensures that even inexperienced employees can identify the cause of a sudden interruption to a production line.

Create safety systems easily

The safety network controllers in the NX series include the NX-SL5500/5700 safety CPU, the NX-CSG320 communication controller and the NX102-9020 machine automation controller. Networking the controllers with the NX102 machine automation controller enables the simultaneous use of EtherNet/IP and CIP Safety as well as EtherCAT and FSoE (FailSafe over EtherCAT). This makes it easy to create safety systems for CIP Safety robots from different suppliers. The NX-SL5700 safety CPU offers up to 254 CIP safety connections and enables the creation of safety systems for large production lines. In combination with the NX102 machine automation controller, the NX series safety network controllers enable real-time safety control of up to 12 motors with EtherCAT and FSoE.

The integrated Sysmac Studio development environment enables fast safety programming. The logging of safety data helps to determine the cause of a production line stop. Restoring the safety unit enables the hardware to be replaced easily without the use of software. An SD card with logging settings is used to log the safety data.

According to documents from Omron / am