Pepperl+Fuchs Blog

Dust explosion disasters like the one at the Imperial Sugar Company refinery in Georgia, USA, resulted in several congressional hearings in the USA that cited the US Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) for not enforcing worker protection regulations. As a result, OSHA has since identified at least 30,000 plants in the USA as having potential problems from dust hazards. It is also estimated that around 2,200 dust explosions happen throughout Europe each year. As the industry continues to become aware of this potentially devastating problem, they will need solutions that protect their workers, plants, and the surrounding environments. Read in our blog article, where combustible dust atmospheres may occur and how these could be prevented.

The Pepperl+Fuchs Viator® USB HART interface provides a flexible link between your PC or handheld and HART networks. It can be used to commission, service, calibrate, and acquire data from any HART field device or transmitter, making it a powerful tool for technicians. With our ViatorCheckBT software, you can troubleshoot the Viator modem from a PC or HART-capable device. In this blog article we guide you step by step through the troubleshooting process.

Whether as practical automated guided carts, rolling assembly platforms, or massive self-driving container tank transporters, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in all possible designs have become indispensable elements in modern production processes that follow the Industry 4.0 principle. They help to make everyday work significantly easier, preserve existing resources, and speed up transport processes considerably. They differ widely in appearance, and the technologies that enable the vehicles to work automatically or autonomously are highly diverse. RFID is often used, and when applied intelligently, this radio-based identification method can perform numerous tasks on the AGV. This blog article presents three possible versions.

In industrial vision applications, a conventional representation of 3-D point clouds in space is often no longer sufficient to precisely identify relevant object details. With the PXL+ technology developed by Pepperl+Fuchs subsidiary VMT, however, 3-D point cloud images can be enriched with any number of sensor data. Thanks to this valuable additional information, the gap between human and machine vision can be closed, allowing numerous (industrial) applications to be solved more efficiently and expanding the range of applications that can be automated.

In this blog article, we explain what stands behind the term PXL+, where the technology is already being used successfully, and the potential it offers.

Pepperl+Fuchs modular cable pulls meet a variety of challenges that other sensors simply cannot. Made from a combination of components, they are easily tailored to the exact needs of your application. Environmental resistance, form factor, and disregard for particulates in the air are all qualities that help cable pulls stand alone for tough applications.

Unlike containment or prevention, purge and pressurization separates general-purpose equipment from the surrounding potentially explosive atmosphere using a standard, lightweight enclosure. The enclosure is then purged with industrial-grade air or inert gas to eliminate all hazardous gas inside. Then, the flow is decreased to maintain a pressure higher than that of the dangerous external atmosphere. This prevents the flammable mixture from coming in contact with the components inside the enclosure.

Pepperl+Fuchs offers an array of purge systems. The 2000 series is a legacy system that is now obsolete, and its recommended replacement is the 6000 series—the latest Type X purge system from Pepperl+Fuchs.

2020 has brought many changes to the way we operate and perform our day-to-day tasks. In the automation world, facilities are limiting the number of people they have on-site to essential personnel only. All other employees are working remotely. In some roles, this is unproblematic and easy to manage, but in others it is tedious and many responsibilities cannot be performed.

For automation sites that have implemented a Pepperl+Fuchs VisuNet RM Shell thin-client-based architecture for their HMI systems, VisuNet Control Center can be used to make life more manageable inside and outside of the facility. The software allows users to easily communicate, manage, and interface with their entire RM Shell-based thin client installation—whether it consists of desktop thin clients in non-hazardous areas or workstation thin clients in Division 1 areas.

The internationally standardized IO-Link technology offers many new features and benefits that help modernize existing systems for Industry 4.0. And with the massive shift to smart manufacturing in modern production environments, many companies are beginning to consider implementing IO-Link in their existing manufacturing systems. In this article, you will learn more about the advantages of intelligent communication technology and how you can modernize existing systems with IO-Link masters from Pepperl+Fuchs.

When selecting an intrinsic safety barrier for an analog input application, one of the biggest issues customers face is differentiating between sinking and sourcing. These terms are used to refer to where the power of the current signal is coming from. Not sure what they mean? Keep reading.

PortVision® DX is a Pepperl+Fuchs management software included with all DeviceMaster® serial gateways, ICE2 and ICE 3 series IO-Link Masters, and managed RocketLinx® Ethernet switches. This free software allows you to configure network settings, upload firmware, manage, and monitor Ethernet-attached devices within one application. PortVision DX detects Pepperl+Fuchs Ethernet-attached devices, eliminating the complicated patchwork of separate drivers, web interfaces, and proprietary software typically needed to deploy a network of industrial communication devices.