KPA Automation softPLC provides support of PROFINET, the open standard for industrial Ethernet. PROFINET satisfies all requirements for automation technology and connects controllers and devices, facilitating faster, safer, and higher quality manufacturing.
PROFINET facilitates the real-time data exchange between controllers (called IO-Controllers) and field connected devices (called IO-Devices). IO-Controllers include PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers), DCSs (Distributed Control Systems), and IPCs (industrial PC) whereas IO-Devices can be varied: I/O blocks, drives, sensors, or actuators. PROFINET is designed for fast Ethernet communication and is based on the provider-consumer model, guaranteeing efficient data transmission.
Benefits of PROFINET:
- Everything on one cable.
PROFINET is the ideal solution for automation control thanks to its real-time data transmission capability and Ethernet-based integrated communication system. - Flexible installation and network topology.
PROFINET flexible line structures make it adaptable to any existing plant situation while its standard Ethernet design supports wired and wireless transmission physics all at once. - Scalable real-time
PROFINET is designed to handle real-time communication across various applications, ranging from simple control tasks to motion control operations. For high-precision closed-loop control tasks, deterministic and isochronous transmission of time-critical process data with a jitter of 1µs is possible. - High availability
PROFINET integrates automatically reacting redundancy solutions and intelligent diagnostic concepts. The acyclic transmission of diagnostic data provides important network and device status information, including a display of the network topology. This provides cross-vendor diagnostics based on location. Integrated predictive diagnostic mechanisms also increase availability.
KPA Automation softPLC supports PROFINET RT (Real Time) which provides deterministic performance for automation applications in the 1-10 ms range. This software-based solution is ideal for typical I/O purposes related to motion control and high requirements.
In addition, it is possible to browse the network for PROFINET devices and configure them using GSDML files. These files describe PROFINET devices regarding their identification, structure, process data, parameters, and diagnosis.
KPA Automation softPLC supports handling device alarms using driver specific function blocks. Alarms from PROFINET IO devices can be evaluated and acknowledged.
Moreover, KPA Automation softPLC architecture is designed to simultaneously handle fieldbuses of different types, for example, EtherCAT and PROFINET, in one KPA Automation softPLC instance.
