I/O Link Anybody?

Hey all.

I'm wonder what everybody uses for IO Link when using AB PLCs....

I have never used any of this stuff but I'm looking at the Balluff stuff for a new project.

I'm curious what brand of I/O link will best and most cleanly integrate with my Compact Logix PLCs.

Any comments for or against any particular brand??



Thanks

IO Link - more and more coming

PLC Pie Guy said:

Hey all.

I'm wonder what everybody uses for IO Link when using AB PLCs....

I have never used any of this stuff but I'm looking at the Balluff stuff for a new project.

I'm curious what brand of I/O link will best and most cleanly integrate with my Compact Logix PLCs.

Any comments for or against any particular brand??



Thanks

Click to expand...

Yew we are using IO link sensors. Not absolutely mandatory or required yet, but they are putting in place a good migration path.

An IO Link sensor retains its crore capability as a sensor to have a digital threshold output, but also adds a digital communications of other useful sensor information.

It is required to have a IO Link master node to data mine the additional IO link information from the devices.

Lean on vendors and distributors to provide spoon-fed AOI add-on instructions that plug into your AB controller. If no AOI provided, you will be faced with byte swapping and byte assembly, and byte parsing to garner the data.

We are pulling real time analog process values from sensor directly over IO link without the need to do any analog scaling. When the sensor display says -7.05psi that is exactly what the plc sees.

I am sure other users will chime in on extended data reaped that is helpful to the bottom line.

I would be interested in hearing about people’s experience and field use cases.
If having to configure the IO-Link master and having to reassemble the data in the plc just to get out of scaling the signal in the plc seems like more work. On top of having to configure the sensor and setup scaling there as well. I’m thinking of ifm’s air flow and pressure sensors.