Testing, time-based control help CIP based networks; ODVA meets Feb. 24-26

ODVA and TÜV Rheinland collaborate on conformance testing in Japan; white paper offers help on IEEE 1588 time-based network control; ODVA CIP networks conference convenes.

By Control Engineering Staff February 24, 2009
See more of this diagram in the PDF white paper on IEEE 1588 from Rockwell Automation .

The ODVA 2009 CIP Networks Conference & 13th Annual Meeting , Feb. 24-26, near Orlando, FL, includes speakers from American Axle & Manufacturing; ITEI, a key government institute in China; Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI; and more than a dozen representatives from member companies presenting papers on the latest technical developments in CIP (common industrial protocol)
In related network news, ODVA and TÜV Rheinland collaborated on conformance testing in Japan, and a white paper provides help on IEEE 1588 time-based network control.
Wider conformance: ODVA approves TÜV Rheinland Japan as a conformance Test Service Provider (TSP)
ODVA and the TÜV Rheinland Group announced on Feb. 6 that TÜV Rheinland Japan has been authorizeducts built to the ODVA specifications comply with the specifications and interoperate in multi-vendor installations.
ODVA manages the specifications and oversees conformance testing for itsfor being an ODVA-authorized vendor and whose products pass the tests receive an official Declaration of Conformity and earn the right to use the group’s “Conformance Tested” certification and logo marks.
The move extends ODVA’s cooperation with TÜV Rheinland that began with CIP Safety and now includes testing partnerships in Japan and China. All orders for ODVA conformance testing, including at TÜV Rheinland Japan, may be ordered through its web site at www.odva.org. Vendors interested in learning more about conformance testing or abouttesting in Japan should contact ODVA directly. TÜV Rheinland Japan will be conducting conformance testing at its Global Technology Assessment Center in Yokohama.
Reference paper on IEEE 1588 standard details industrial application cases that benefit from time-based control, Rockwell automation says.
A white paper from Rockwell Automation describes how manufacturers can help improve control-system responsiveness and accuracy through time-based control techniques available as a result of the IEEE 1588 standard for industrial networking, the company announced Jan. 19.
The paper, “ An Application of IEEE 1588 to Industrial Automation ,” focuses on the IEEE 1588 standard, which defines the Precision Time Protocol that allows for precise time synchronization of automation components using Ethernet. The paper discusses how, by synchronizing the clocks of I/O devices with controllers, the code scan performance of the actual controller can become irrelevant, regardless of the production line speed.
The protocol helps allow automation equipment achieve synchronization within the 50 nanosecond range when using hardware-driven time synchronization. The paper identifies key use cases that can benefit from time-based control techniques to improve performance results over traditional control methods. Applications addressed in the paper include high-speed inspection, high-speed diverters, precision motion control and machine-wide position registration. By attacking these scan-time hungry applications with a new time-based approach, production rates are no longer limited by a controller’s execution time and ability to handle interruptions.

With time-based control, the control technique becomes predictive
based on precise knowledge of when events have and will occur, instead of traditional, reactive control approaches which require extraordinary control, network, and I/O speeds to match line speed improvements. Time-based control allows line speeds to increase, improving machine throughput. It also enables higher accuracy to diverters, which allows reject systems to perform more precise control over scrap. In addition, a synchronized automation system can help generate precise time stamps for distributed events. These event time stamps, in turn, can improve machine uptime. By using these time stamps in the alarming system, operators can quickly identify the root cause of a machine shutdown.
The IEEE standard is the core technology behind ODVA’s CIP Sync technology, which adopts the standard into the industrial networks environment, including EtherNet/IP. CIP Sync provides a set of common data objects on top of the IEEE 1588 standard that industrial components based on
“Integration of IEEE-1588 into CIP and EtherNet/IP will allow users to take advantage of standard unmodified Ethernet, including standard Ethernet infrastructure, to help solve a whole new group of high-performance applications where hard, real-time performance is required,” said Katherine Voss, executive director of ODVA. “As products become available, ODVA expects to see IEEE-1588 and CIP Sync used with a standard, unmodified Ethernet infrastructure in a wide range of applications– previously the domain of purpose-built, specialty networks – such as robotics, gantries and large-scale conveyors systems.”
Also read:

10 CIP benefits

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– Edited by Mark T. Hoske , editor in chief
Control Engineering News Desk
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