Fast-track your sensor technology with HBK IO-Link solution

To help those within industrial and manufacturing industries solve their automation or industrial process engineering problems, HBK has added IO-Link, a communication protocol that offers a simplified measuring chain, bidirectional communication and smart functions, to its sensor portfolio.

IO-Link enables smart sensors and actuators in the field-level to communicate efficiently and cost-effectively with control-level and IT-Level applications. It eliminates the need for an external measurement amplifier by incorporating it, either as an in-line amplifier or directly within the sensor itself. This integration provides users with a single unit that combines both the sensor and amplifier, aligning with HBK’s smart sensors concept, thus simplifying the measurement chain and reducing costs.

Different sensor and hardware solutions in one machine or production line runs a higher risk of components not being available at some point in the future. This particularly affects servicing and obtaining repair parts. IO-Link’s standardized (IEC 61131-9) solution has a wide acceptance within the automation industry, meaning the technology is future proofed for decades to come.

IO-Link also reduces the need for service technicians with multiple skillsets, as all the sensors in a machine - from switching sensors to mechanical quantity (Force, Load, Torque) - can be drastically simplified, as it offers a standardized way for connecting sensors to the PLC.

Overloading the PLC with data is no longer an issue as HBK IO-Link sensors offer domain specific algorithms focusing on the pre-processing of measurement values and sending process-relevant results to the PLC. These pre-processing capabilities are domain-specific for force, load and torque applications.

Current analog sensors don´t provide any information about their specific sensor health status. With traditional strain-gauge based sensors a defective cable, static and dynamic capacity overload or temperature excitations cannot be tracked, which results in unexpected sensor failings and costly machine downtime requiring servicing. 

IO-Link force and load sensors come with built in sensor health monitoring features such as temperature limit tracking as well as static and dynamic load capacity tracking, that follow the sensor specific limits which are programmed into the sensor during production. The user benefits from this built in health-monitoring feature, by receiving alarm and event notifications via IO-Link standardized communication protocol. Machine downtime is drastically reduced, and servicing can be planned much more efficiently.