EtherCAT

EtherCAT is the fastest emerging network for machine automation. I t is Omron's de-facto machine network for our wide range of field and motion devices. It is Ethernet based, fast, accurate and highly efficient in terms of data transmission.
All our EtherCAT devices have been designed and tested to meet Omron's stringent requirements on noise immunity.

• It is industrial Ethernet and uses standard IEEE 802.3 frames.
• It achieves high synchronisation accuracy by using a distributed clock mechanism.
• It is the Fastest class network on the market with 100 μs refresh time and less than 1 μs jitter
• It is simple to set up with automatic address assignment for nodes
• It uses standard Ethernet cables and connectors.
• It has not only machine control but also safety control.
• It offers seamless integration of the safety solution into the EtherCAT machine network

The EtherCAT Telegram is contained in the Ethernet Data section of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet frame. The frame travels through the media at 100 Mbps in full duplex mode.

Seamless integration of the safety into machine automation.
The FSoE frame is included in the EtherCAT process data.
This system provides a flexible solution with distributed safety I/O.

The EtherCAT node slave measures the time difference between incoming and returning frame - timestamp-. With these timestamps the master can determine the propagation delay offset to the individual slave accurately. This mechanism ensures accurate synchronisation between devices with less than 1 μs jitter.

The slave devices extract and/or insert data on the fly. This method assures the highest possible throughput.

EtherCAT uses standard 100BASE-TX Ethernet communication very efficiently, over standard shielded Ethernet cables and connectors. No need for network switches. No need for network switches in line topology.

With two EtherCAT ports on all devices, no additional switches are required to create a linear network. EtherCAT junctions slaves can be used to build tree and star topologies, which provides section segregation isolation.