News Overview

Newly Developed Industrial Network Achieves New Manufacturing Using IoT and AI

ProductJan 22, 2018

One of the world’s highest performance networks for motion control devices has had a significant update, preparing it to meet the heightened standards of today’s new generation of manufacturing environments.

Yaskawa Electric Corporation has announced the development of MECHATROLINK-4 (M-4), which inherits the functions, performance, and usability of the popular MECHATROLINK network developed in the first half of the 1990s. MECHATROLINK-4 achieves advanced and more efficient control in many ways, including improving transmission efficiency, adding multi-master functions.

Also, for the Σ (Sigma)-LINK developed by Yaskawa in the mid-1990s for communication between servo amplifier and servomotors, Yaskawa announces that it has developed the Σ-LINK II which supports functionality to connect and to synchronize with not only encoders but also sensors and other I/O devices.

In recent years, the environment for industry is changing significantly, for example the introduction of smart production and operations, and the achievement of flexible and stable production using IoT and AI. With this background, a variety of sensors for ensuring product quality, predictive maintenance have begun to be connected in large numbers to machines and equipment at production sites, and the product data generated by these sensors are required to be collected and utilized.

Using the newly developed M-4 and Σ-LINK II together makes it possible to easily and simply synchronize and acquire not only the data related to motion control but also various sensor data. This further raises the productivity and achieves a new level of manufacturing technology utilizing IoT and AI.

Yaskawa also announces that it has decided to transfer the developed M-4 and Σ-LINK II to the MECHATROLINK MEMBERS ASSOCIATION (MMA) during FY2018.

Together with the MMA, Yaskawa will work for the further promotion of MECHATROLINK and the achievement of new advances in manufacturing.

Production management PC for information system

1. Main Features

(1) MECHATROLINK-4

While inheriting the high functionality, high performance, high reliability, and usability of the previous M-III (ensuring the application compatibility), the M-4 improves transmission efficiency (performance improvement of about 4times under the same conditions), provides much higher functionality and performance by supporting distributed systems with multi-master functions, and achieves simpler development and maintenance.

Also, the M-4 specifications supports 1000Base-T in the physical layer for the further performance improvement in the future. (M-4G)

Layer	Item	MECHATROLINK-III	MECHATROLINK-4
Application Layer	Command profile	Standard servo, standard stepping motor drivers, standard I/O, standard inverter
Data Link Layer	Maximum number of stations	C1 master 1 station, C2 master 1 station, slave 62 stations	128 stations (Maximum 8 masters, Maximum 127 slaves)
	Sync manager	Not supported	Supported
	Sync jitter	≦±1μs (Limit of 19 hops maximum)	≦±1μs
	Multi-master	Not supported	Supported
	Communication with multiple transmission cycles	Not supported	Supported
	Duplex	Half duplex	Full duplex
	Internet protocol	Not supported	Supported
	Ethernet compatibility	Only PHY layer	Compatible
Physical Layer	Transmission speed	100Mbps	100Mbps(M-4)/ 1Gbps(M-4G) Alternative
	Transmission distance	100m between stations	100m between stations (100Mbps) 80m between stations (1Gbps)
	Topology	Cascade/star

Main MECHATROLINK-4 Specifications

(2) Σ-LINK II

While inheriting the high functionality, high reliability communications of previous encoder communications (Σ-LINK), Σ-LINK II supports cascade connections like MECHATROLINK. Σ-LINK II achieves higher functionality and performance with reduced wiring by connecting not only encoders but also sensors, I/O equipment, and other devices installed on the machine side in cascades.

Layer	Item	Σ-LINK	Σ-LINK II
Application Layer	Profile	Σ-LINK command profile
Data Link Layer	Transmission mode	Cyclic transmission, Acyclic transmission
	Maximum number of slaves	1	14
	Duplex	Half duplex
Physical Layer	Transmission speed	4Mbps/8Mbps	4Mbps/8Mbps/16Mbps/24Mbps/32Mbps
	Electrical specification	RS-485
	Topology	Peer-to-peer (one-to-one)	Peer-to-peer (one-to-one), cascade(one-to-many)

Main Σ-LINK II Specifications

2. Future Plans

Releasing the specifications of M-4 and Σ-LINK II through MMA are in preparation a scheduled unveiling at the Yaskawa’s booth and the MMA booth at System Control Fair 2017, to be held from Wednesday November 29, 2017 to Friday December 1, 2017 at Tokyo Big Sight.

* Ethernet is a trademark of Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

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