Turck: On-Machine Ethernet Block I/O

The spread of Ethernet on the plant floor continues to expand across the decentralized and centralized communications strcuture options. On the decentralized front, to avoid requiring the use of a central control cabinet structure for deploying industrial Ethernet across machines in a plant,Turckhas developed BL compact — a flexible block I/O that is reportedly capable of obtaining analog, digital, thermocouple, RTD, serial, RFID or a mixture of signal types in a compact, machine-mountable device over Ethernet.

According to Turck, up to two signal types can be combined in any combination in BL compact, thereby allowing devices to be added to an existing network and signals gathered on the machine without an enclosure. With an ability to handle the connection of to 16 devices, BL compact’s on-machine location also serves to reduce the time it takes to run wires for each device back to the control cabinet and the potential for wiring errors.

Available with four, eight or 16 ports in IP68 and IP69K rated housings, BL compact offers M8 or M12 connectors for bus communication and auxiliary power to facilitate installation into existing or new applications.

BL compact is part ofTurck’s unified Multiprotocol product portfolio，which enables users to employ one device for two Ethernet protocols, including EtherNet/IP and Modbus TCP. Turck contends that this capability simplifies operations by allowing multiple protocols to exist within a single device, while permitting one Ethernet master to control the outputs while input and diagnostic data is available to the other protocols.