EtherCAT safety drive profile

February 2009 News

Because current drive profiles do not cover functional safety, the EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) is developing a new safety drive profile to close this gap. With this new drive profile, the safety functionality of EtherCAT drives with CiA402 (CANopen) or SERCOS drive profile can be used and configured in a manufacturer-independent way.

The IEC 61800-5-2 standard defines safety-relevant functions for drives. With these functions, safe stopping of the drive, eg, safe torque off (STO), safe stop 2 (SS2) or safe monitoring of motion, eg, safe limited speed (SLS) can be achieved. This allows dangerous movements at start-up or during manual interaction with a machine to be avoided or limited in a safe manner.

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