The risk of human injury, property damage, and environmental harm is inherent in industrial processes. For this reason, there is hardly a machine or piece of equipment in existence today that does not feature an emergency stop button, indicating the presence of a safety system. The importance of safety in automation engineering is steadily increasing.
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The IEC 61508-compliant technology has been developed under PROFIBUS & PROFINET International (PI) and enjoys widespread international acceptance. PROFIsafe has become an international standard (IEC 61784-3-3) and has been evaluated positively by German notified bodies such as IFA and TÜV.
PROFIsafe is independent of the communication method and provides cost-effective and flexible functional safety. It covers the entire communication path from the sensor over the controller to the actuator and integrates safety and standard communication on one cable (black channel principle).
...for all sectors of discrete manufacturing and process automation. Examples are
- Maximum safety performance for protection of a press
- Flexible integration of all types of safety components in the electronics industry
- Wireless safety-related transmission for use of driverless transport systems, cranes, ropeways
- Flexible production in the automotive industry for different bodies on one assembly line
In addition to the industrial sectors listed, PROFIsafe applications are also found in the
packaging, transport, wood processing and process industries, for example.
- Compliance with the most stringent safety requirements (up to category 4, PL e, SIL 3)
- Integrated configuration and diagnostics
- Reduction in wiring effort
- Flexible automation
- Integration of a wide variety of safety components
...of safety components have participated in the creation of vendor-neutral and open standards under the framework of PI. This enables the development of an extensive and complete portfolio by many different providers – ranging from sensors to controllers to actuators:
- Safety control systems
- Remote I/O (in IP20, IP67)
- Safety gateways (e.g., AS-i Safety at Work)
- Safety sensors (e.g., light arrays, laser scanners, rotary encoders)
- Drives with integrated safety functions
- Valves and valve blocks
- Devices for process automation (e.g., level monitors, pressure transmitters)
- Mobile operator control and monitoring with safety functionality via Industrial WLAN
With its numerous installations, PROFIsafe has posted striking evidence of its leading role in fieldbus-based safe communication systems. At present there are 1,550,000 PROFIsafe nodes installed.
...without impacts on these existing fieldbus standards. It is possible to transmit safety messages on the existing standard bus cables in coexistence with the standard messages.
