PCI Fieldbus Cards

Beckhoff completes its offer of fieldbus components with the PCI-based PC Fieldbus Cards for Lightbus, PROFIBUS, CANopen, DeviceNet, SERCOS interface and Ethernet. The cards have been particularly developed for fast controls and for real-time tasks such as drive position control and can therefore be applied to a wide range of applications. To enable universal application, the interface cards are fitted with either one or two fieldbus channels. The Ethernet variant FC9004 contains four channels altogether.The power of the PC Fieldbus Cards can be most easily seen in combination with the TwinCAT software PLC and NC. But other applications also benefit from the intelligent PCI cards that handle the fieldbus protocol efficiently on their own processors. The process image is available in the DPRAM interface to the PC. Drivers for Windows NT/2000/XP and convenient configuration tools are included in the TwinCAT I/O software package. High-level language programs use the DLL, Visual Basic applications the ActiveX interface. Applications with OPC interface can access process data and parameters via an OPC server.

All cards are characterised by concentrated fieldbus know-how in the form of the following features:

• fast data exchange through short cycle times (e.g. Lightbus: to 100 µs)
• process data communication is either free running, synchronised, synchronised with delay or equidistant
• powerful parameter and diagnostics interfaces
• freely configurable bus management for every device

 

Mini PCI Fieldbus Cards

New Mini PCI cards for PROFIBUS, CANopen, DeviceNet, SERCOS interface and Ethernet enhance the Beckhoff PC Fieldbus Card range. Like the standard PCI cards from Beckhoff, the interfaces are optimised for fast controllers and real-time tasks.

The new generation of Beckhoff Industrial PCs, including the C69xx control cabinet PCs and the CP62xx/CP66xx Control Panel PCs, are extremely compact. With each device featuring two Ethernet ports, they represent high-performance Industrial PCs for Ethernet- and EtherCAT-based control applications. The IPCs can optionally be extended with Mini PCI cards or with fieldbus technology. The bus interface is not implemented on the fieldbus card but separately in the respective housing (device-specific).