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Industry events are back! While this year’s Hanover Fair was much smaller, the quality of the visitors was especially high, the industrial community is clearly ready to return to normal with personal contacts and business travel. ARC has identified the important topics from the trade show and will present them to you in this “@Hanover Fair 2022” series.
Control-Cabinet-free Automation
Control cabinet have shrunk over the years thanks to the use of compact automation hardware. On-machine IP67 IO blocks have also helped to cut the costs of purchasing and wiring electrical cabinets by taking some of the hardware out of the cabinet and mounting it directly on the machine. Beckhoff has now taken this trend to the next level with the introduction of its MX System for control cabinet-free automation. MX System consists of pluggable IP67 automation modules for logic and motion control, all mounted on a baseplate with a built-in backplane that is, in turn, mounted directly on the machine. According to Beckhoff, MX System replaces all the tasks and features of the classic Rittal-style control cabinet: including energy supply, fuse protection and distribution, generation and monitoring of auxiliary voltages, sequence control of IO, control of motors and actuators, and the connection to field devices.
IP67 versions of automation components are obviously costlier to manufacture, but these additional costs are weighed against the elimination of the control cabinet, including labor costs for wiring and installation. According to the company, the final cost is on par with a traditional cabinet-based solution. The advantages lie in the elimination of wiring (2-3 days per cabinet), fewer components, and a much smaller footprint.
Hanover Fair 2022
After an unprecedented 3-year hiatus, the Hanover Fair returned last month in a more compact format, but with a surprisingly high level of enthusiasm among exhibitors and visitors. Tired of video conferences and virtual events, 75,000 industry players attended the 4-day event that was postponed earlier this year from its traditional April timeslot. Despite its reduced size, the show did not disappoint, and exhibitors expressed a high level of satisfaction with the quality of contacts.