The launch of Festo's self-styled Front End Display (FED) 50/90 marks the arrival of a versatile human machine interface, capable of visualising and allowing intervention into program sequences, while also being compatible with all common Fieldbus protocols.
FEC and FED form a team in which work is evenly distributed. While the front end controller FEC takes care of control tasks, the associated front end display FED 50 or 90 visualises the program sequences and assists the operator in gaining optimum exploitation of FEC intelligence. FED 50/90 displays can be networked either via Ethernet or the EXT interface of an FEC Compact and FEC Standard. Additional plug-in modules allow the displays to be connected to all common Fieldbus systems.
The front end displays FED 50/90 are equipped with a generously-dimensioned program memory, which can be expanded as and when needed, as well as printer ports for ease of important data capture. The FEDs also come with a 4 x 20-character graphics display, and Web servers and PLC drivers are available for additional functionality. The import and export of tag files and texts for translation is also part of the software's capability.
The FED software allows simple data acquisition and uploading of entire projects, giving maintenance-technicians complete access to current projects, thereby simplifying configuration, servicing and maintenance tasks.
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