With the WH58MR, sensor specialist Siko is currently presenting a new absolute safety encoder with a hollow shaft. This rounds off the portfolio with the WV58MR safety encoder available with solid shafts and offers machine manufacturers full flexibility and design freedom.

The WH58MR safety encoder can be optionally equipped with a hollow shaft of 10-15 mm open on one side; and with an outer diameter of just 58 mm. The rotary encoder is also particularly flexible in terms of the connection type. In addition to M12 connectors (single or with bus in/bus out), variants with cable outlet or customer-specific connectors are also available. Despite this flexibility, the encoder should also impress in terms of robustness: High shock and vibration resistance, UV resistance, the optional salt spray-resistant housing and IP67 protection make the encoder ideal for use in particularly harsh applications.

The "inner values" that are so important are what make this encoder stand out. The Siko encoder is based on the unique Pure.mobile technology platform. This technology was specially designed and developed for position detection tasks in commercial vehicles. "Unlike other products available on the market, our sensors for mobile machines are also developed exclusively for them. With over 30 years of experience in the commercial vehicle sector, we know what is important and are setting new standards with this platform. Hence the apt name Pure.Mobile," emphasizes Mathias Roth, Industry Manager Mobile Automation at Siko. Every sensor with the Pure.Mobile label meets the EMC requirements for construction machinery as well as agricultural and forestry machinery, the E1 requirements and is based on wear-free, magnetic sensing technology. The flexibly expandable modular principle is also unique. The rotary encoder can be equipped with additional functions such as an integrated inclination sensor, DIP switches for parameterization or digital inputs and outputs via customer-selectable option cards.

The safe rotary encoder can be configured as either a singleturn or multiturn variant. The measuring range of 4,096 revolutions (12-bit multiturn) is resolved with 16,384 steps (14 bits) per revolution. SIKO relies on a special safe gearbox to record the multiturn. In contrast to battery-buffered or self-powered multiturn technologies, this provides reliable position values even years later. And this over a wide temperature range of -40...+85 °C.

The two galvanically isolated sensor units of the encoder detect the position absolutely autonomously. The absolute position and speed are permanently made available to the control system via the interface. The customer can choose between a CANopen Safety, redundant CANopen interface and a redundant SAE J1939 interface. This means that the encoder can be used in applications up to performance level "d" (PLd according to EN ISO 13849).