2015 Spring European EtherCAT Plug Fest breaks records, highlights growing interest in interoperability testing

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IBG - SA Instrumentation & Control Buyers' Guide

June 2015 News

The EtherCAT Technology Group’s (ETG) first EtherCAT Plug Fest in 2015 broke several records. Never before have so many companies with so many different devices and so many master-slave combinations for interoperability testing participated in a single Plug Fest. In addition, the number of EtherCAT Slave Controller (ESC) manufacturers on site was higher than ever – one of them being Trinamic Motion Control, the hosts of this year’s event in Hamburg.

The seeds sown by the ETG during the 2014 Plug Fests continued to grow at the 2015 Hamburg event. One reason for this is the fact that the number of available EtherCAT products continues to increase at a rapid pace. On the other hand, the EtherCAT Plug Fests are widely recommended as a highly valuable method to support the development processes of new EtherCAT devices.

A total of 70 participants attended the event, bringing with them 12 different EtherCAT masters and 42 EtherCAT slaves. This number breaks the previous ETG-internal record regarding the number of tested master-slave combinations. With the five attending ESC manufacturers, the number of EtherCAT chips at a Plug Fest was as high as ever before, as well. One of them was Trinamic Motion Control, whose TMC8460 is currently in development. Dr. Guido Beckmann, who attended the Plug Fest as the ETG expert, explained: “Plug Fests are particularly beneficial, particularly for EtherCAT devices which are in development. Manufacturer questions can be answered, and necessary adjustments with regard to interoperability and conformance can be made before the market launch.”

In addition to the practical supervision of the interoperability tests, EtherCAT experts from the ETG provided the participants with support as well as information about actual conformance topics, based on the experiences from the worldwide test centres, as well as direct feedback from the field.

In addition to the EtherCAT Plug Fests in Europe, the ETG conducts similar events annually in Asia and North America.

For more information contact EtherCAT Technology Group, +49 911 540 56 226, [email protected], www.ethercat.org

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2015 Spring European EtherCAT Plug Fest breaks records, highlights growing interest in interoperability testing

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