IO-Link is enjoying increasing popularity, with demand for the communications standard growing rapidly, especially in the food & beverage industry. The Fieldbus-independent technology for point-to-point communication is easy to use and provides a cost-effective way to digitalize industrial plants. Endress+Hauser offers a wide range of IO-Link products for a large selection of process parameters. IO-Link is regarded as an established standard for measurement devices with basic functionality, offering advantages such as data transparency and additional control through digital technology.
Integrating IO-Link-capable sensors and actuators is especially popular with suppliers of machines or skids for the food & beverage industry. Particularly for utilities, devices with basic functionality are well suited; instruments with a rich set of different functionalities would unnecessarily increase complexity and costs.
The majority of the IO-Link sensors can be optionally operated in analog mode (4–20mA) with simple configuration changes to the instrument, thus allowing production workflows to remain in place. If extra information such as diagnostic and service data is required, in addition to the actual process parameters, an installed IO-Link-capable instrument can be simply switched to a digital signal.
Endress+Hauser instruments with IO-Link interfaces support the acyclic transmission of helpful metadata to ensure stable and efficient production. Furthermore, the smart sensor profile is designed for simple engineering, which reduces the effort required by plant operators to integrate sensors into their systems.
Endress+Hauser offers a comprehensive product portfolio of IO-Link-capable instruments for all relevant process parameters. The company recently introduced the Smartec CLD18 compact conductivity sensor, IO-Link versions of the PMP51, PMP55, and PMC51 pressure transmitters, and the Deltapilot FMB50 level transmitter. With these new additions to the IO-Link portfolio, customers can exploit the benefits of digitalization in a cost-efficient manner.
