EtherCAT draws ahead in the industrial ethernet competition

by Bill Lackey, Vice President of Automation
Motion Solutions Posted 08/07/2018

A decade ago, communications in machines took place on a point-to-point basis. If you were building a multi-axis system, you would have to wire 15 wires per axis from the drive to the controller. If an axis faulted, the system would only return a single digital I/O point indicating a fault. Discovering the source required interrogating the drive—no matter where on the machine it was located—then spending a significant amount of time troubleshooting. The development of industrial Ethernet changed that model and those of us working in machine automation have never looked back. . . 

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