Gefran launches Hyperwave EtherCAT: smart position sensors, Industry 4.0 Ready

“The current market shows an increasing demand of smart sensors, which stems naturally from companies’ needs to efficiently gather and analyze a vast quantity of process data” says Edoardo Zilioli, Sensors Marketing Manager in Gefran, who continues “In this context, the EtherCAT protocol portrays an ideal solution, which is aligned with the results of HMS Networks report, highlighting an exponential growth of new installed nodes on a worldwide scale in the last three years” and concludes “The ability to ensure stable connections, even on long distances, becomes a competitive advantage for companies who aim at optimizing production processes and maximizing efficiency”.

The Hyperwave EtherCAT product range includes two main series: WRA-E, with a stainless- steel rod and WPA-E, with an aluminum profile and sliding or floating magnetic cursors. Both series support up to 16 independent cursors, set on a wide range of available strokes between 50 and 4000mm. With a data sampling rate of 500 microseconds per each magnetic cursor, the entire Hyperwave EtherCAT series delivers exceptional performance.

An additional defining feature is its measuring precision and accuracy, ensured by a non-linearity error of only 0.01% full scale, the best result on the market, while also providing a programmable resolution between 1 and 40 microns.

The wide range of operating temperatures, from -40°C to +85°C, combined with high resistance to shock (up to 100g) and to vibration (up to 15g), allows stability even in applications where other mechanical and hydraulic components usually face notable stress. The transduction electronics of the magnetostrictive signal offer great electromagnetic immunity. This attribute, paired with a low thermal drift of 25 ppmFS/°C for the sensible element, further enhances the reliability of Hyperwave EtherCAT sensors, allowing them to be a key product in the industrial market.

Thanks to the Hyperwave EtherCAT technology, Gefran offers Industry 4.0 ready sensors, which combine safety and fieldbus reliability with advanced control features of production processes. Among the advantages of the range lie the Working Time, which registers the cursors’ moving time, and allows to program maintenance for the correlated mechanical parts, and the Individual Cursors Offsetting, which allows to set the zero position of each sensor independently, simplifying the system configuration with the help of operational templates. The Power Supply Monitor further extends the useful features of the Hyperwave EtherCAT technology by monitoring voltage spikes, along with a four LED diagnostic and status interface and the Control of Active Cursors, which signals the position of each magnetic cursor, in order to facilitate the immediate intervention in case of malfunction.

Environmental stress, high temperature resistance, extreme measuring precision and easy reprogramming make the Hyperwave EtherCAT magnetostrictive transducers the ideal fit for various applications such as: metallurgy industries, foundries, electro welding of metallic components, together with the manufacturing and cutting of plastic, metal, fabric and paper reels.