Beckhoff expands TwinSAFE with new hardware components

With TwinSAFE, Beckhoff offers an extensive portfolio of software and hardware components for functional safety. This range is continuously being expanded and developed, as demonstrated by numerous new safety I/Os and the TwinCAT Safety PLC with EL6910 functionality.

The EL1957 TwinSAFE EtherCAT Terminal is a digital input and output terminal for sensors with potential-free contacts for 24 V DC. It has eight fail-safe inputs and four fail-safe outputs (up to 2 A). The EL1957 also integrates a programmable TwinSAFE Logic and thus enables direct implementation of the safety application in the terminal. With this TwinSAFE Terminal, users can design their safety applications cost-effectively and with fine granularity, as a complete safety loop solution based on the local inputs and outputs can be created using a single safety component. Other new products include the EL2962 TwinSAFE EtherCAT Terminal with two safe relay contacts and safe analog inputs, initially for 4...20 mA, which are available in the two SIL3-capable versions EL3952 and ELX3952. In addition, the TwinSAFE modules EJ6910, EJ1957, and EJ1918 are now also available in version -0001 without a housing and can therefore be integrated into any device.

The functionality of the dedicated EL6910 TwinSAFE Logic has also been transferred to the industrial PC. This makes the TwinCAT Safety PLC the framework for the EL6910 runtime. The solution remains binary-compatible with the hardware variant, allowing the same tooling to be used (TE9000 for engineering and TwinSAFE Loader/User for TwinCAT 3-independent interaction). In contrast to the hardware solution, however, faster response times and higher configuration limits are achieved in this case due to the use of advanced processor architectures: 4096 instead of 512 FBs, 1024 instead of 128 TwinSAFE groups, 2014 instead of 212 TwinSAFE connections, and 8 µs to 7 ms instead of 1 ms to 15 ms cycle times.