THE ELECTRICAL VALVE TERMINAL LINK
14 December 2004 - Festo

Festo’s CPX terminal presents a truly professional image as an electrical peripheral device for valve terminals: Compatible with all commonly-used field-bus protocols and capable of being adapted to customer-specific connection concepts, it simplifies communication between sensors, valve terminals and the electrical controller level. Depending on the system concept involved, CPX can be combined either with MPA valve terminals to provide a high degree of modularity for harsh environments or with MIDI/MAXI valve terminals to provide optimum triggering of actuators. What is more, the open design of CPX, with its ability to fit quickly and easily into all kinds of applications, makes costly special designs unnecessary.

Installation is simple, thanks to the optimised design principle: The CPX has a physically separate connection panel and electrical section. This separation of the connector block, electronics module and manifold block allows permanent wiring while still permitting fast replacement of the electronics module and thus more efficient rectification of faults.

Early detection of faults prevents downtime. With its diagnostics and preventive maintenance function, the CPX terminal helps enhance machine availability. It supports module- and channel-specific diagnosis, such as undervoltage detection for outputs and valves, short-circuit detection for sensors and valves and open-load detection of missing valve coils. The diagnostics capability of the CPX is combined with a memory facility which allows the CPX to store the causes of the most recent 40 faults, with data on the start and end of these. This makes it much easier to carry out fast fault-finding in electrical installations.

Festo goes one step further to facilitate simpler installation of machinery, controlling involving less wiring, more convenient diagnostics, monitoring and maintenance in order to fulfil customer wishes. Directly installed into the CPX terminal, two new technology modules ensure improved intelligence for the preprocessing of data. Add to this the CPX-FEC, the specialist for front end control and communication tasks, and the CPX-CP interface to ensure an optimal system structure. In conjunction with the CP installation system the CPX can be used system to create decentral structures consisting of valve terminals, the CPX itself and a drive and thus achieve faster cycle times. A particularly practical benefit is the small amount of wiring work required – an important factor for users such as the food industry and process automation.

The optionally available, hand-held CPX-MMI facilitates commissioning and service. CPX terminals can be conveniently configured, set up and diagnosed – without programming or additional software – with the help of the hand-held device which can be connected to any CPX fieldbus node. Thanks to easy advance CPX commissioning, function tests can also be performed with the hand-held device before connection to the fieldbus system.

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  • For December 2004
  • From Festo
  • For Hydraulics and Pneumatics