IO-Link for valve manifolds

I am looking for some ideas to integrate SMC or Festo manifolds over IO-link to an Omron NX PLC. I am new to IO-link but from what I have read, the valve manifolds require class B ports which allows additional power for the manifolds. You also want this type of setup to disable power to the manifold on a E-stop. Is this correct?

Are there any IO-link masters that you would recommend? The Omron master units are incredibly expensive and aren't even available. So I am looking into Balluff at the moment. However, class B ports seem to be not common?

Ideally I would want to integrate discrete sensors onto the same IO-link network as well. I wouldn't want some portion of the machine to be on Balluff and then another portion on another system from someone else.

we use ifm or turck banner field io masters. They both have units (8 port units) that usually have 4 class b ports.
Turck/Banner = TBEN-LL-8IOL
IFM = AL1102

kckku said:

I am new to IO-link but from what I have read, the valve manifolds require class B ports which allows additional power for the manifolds. You also want this type of setup to disable power to the manifold on a E-stop. Is this correct?

Click to expand...

It depends on the application. If you dump air upstream of the valve bank during an E-stop, then it might not be necessary to also drop power to the valves. But in more complicated scenarios with double solenoid valves where you need to maintain air and have the spools return to center, then cutting the power could accomplish this. We use the Class B ports on our IO-Link masters for exactly this reason. Typically the actuator power pin on the master is wired back to the safety relay so it drops on E-stop or guard open. We use the Balluff IO-Link adapters that plug right in to the DB25 connectors on our MAC valve banks. They have several variants with different Class A/B wiring options (see pic).

I'll warn you about one thing that burned us when we first got started with IO-Link. If you get a master with Class B ports for your valves, you have to be careful about plugging a Class A device into those ports. Many Class A devices use pin 2 for a digital output signal, but with Class B this pin is reserved for the actuator power. So if you try to mix and match you can end up with 24V unexpectedly backfeeding into your valve banks (bad). I see that some manufacturers now make master blocks with both Class A and Class B ports on the same device; we will probably look into this for future projects. We use Beckhoff masters because of the EtherCAT compatibility, but I'd suggest checking out Balluff and IFM as they are two of the biggest players in this space.