Emerson has introduced zoned safety capability to its ASCO Numatics™ Series 501 and Series 502 valve manifolds, thereby providing a wider range of assemblies with this functionality. The zoned safety approach – already available in the ASCO Numatics Series 503 valve manifold – enables up to three safety zones to be isolated on a machine from a single assembly. This facilitates improvements in asset availability and productivity, leading to increased profitability.
Providing this technology on multiple sizes of valve manifolds, with various flow rates, gives users greater flexibility to choose the zoned safety valve manifold that best meets the requirements of their application. Compatible with various fieldbus protocols, the user-friendly zoned safety approach is a suitable option for most manual load/unload stations and a wide variety of other industrial applications. For the more compact Series 501 and Series 502 valve manifolds, this would include applications with smaller machines, tighter spaces and lower flow rates.
Zoned safety helps to improve productivity and asset availability because users no longer have to shut down the entire machine when safety circuits are enabled. Instead, the valve manifold can be configured to shut down pilot air and power only to the group of valves controlling the machine’s motion in the operator’s vicinity.
The ASCO Numatics Series 501 and 502 zoned safety valve manifolds are evaluated by TÜV Rheinland and are compatible up to Category 3 PLd.