There is a huge potential for energy savings wherever refrigerators are used – whether in the supermarket around the corner, in everybody’s kitchen or in the food trade.
In the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit, Federal Minister for the Environment Dr Norbert Röttgen addressed a future technology that has been underestimated in many ways, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. It causes about 15 percent of the national electric energy. On December 8, Röttgen granted ECKELMANN the German Cooling Award at a symposium in Berlin.

The Future belongs to Integrated Automation

ECKELMANN AG was awarded the first prize in the category “Refrigeration Management Systems” for its E•LDS control system. The jury explained their decision by pointing out that the control system operates across system boundaries, enabling the integration of refrigeration and building control into a coordinated system and, thus, the activation of synergies. The advantage of the integrated concept becomes obvious in, amongst other things, the effective combination of refrigeration systems with heat recovery and geothermal resources.

Energy-efficient refrigeration is a vital key to the economic and ecological use of energy in the food retailing sector and the food industry. Theoretically, 35 percent of energy could be saved in the field of commercial refrigeration alone.

Depending on the scope of the measures taken, refrigeration and building control by ECKELMANN is capable of improving the energy efficiency of food markets by at least 25 percent, compared to conventional markets. In so doing ECKELMANN technology makes a meaningful contribution towards the reduction of indirect CO2 emissions. The potential for saving was determined by ECKELMANN with regard to a reference market of a long-term customer.

Development in the Race against Climate Change

“The positive evaluation of our system by an independent jury of refrigeration experts confirms to us that, in the fierce competition for innovations in the refrigeration and building control sector, we’re on the right way,” says Dr Frank Uhlemann, Head of the Refrigeration and Building Control Division at ECKELMANN AG, with delight. “The prize money will be used to further intensify our research and development. We are certainly not lacking ideas!” The first prize carries an award of 10,000 Euros.

Integrated system concepts: E•LDS components are used to combine refrigeration, geothermal resources, heating, drinking water heating, and air conditioning into an energetically optimized system.

“Innovation prizes such as this will release incentives for the development of energy-efficient technologies”, explains Dr Gerd Eckelmann, Chairman of ECKELMANN AG. “I am pleased that the contribution of automation, for which public awareness is often lacking, has found a forum here.”

Active energy management in a systematic way

Active energy management is only possible through higher-level control and supervision strategy. By continuously recording the data of all energy consumers and operating conditions E•LDS lays the foundation for the automatic optimization of the refrigeration system and the building control. Further potential for savings can be identified by means of modern PC and web applications (LDSWin and/or Web).

Active energy management is a never-ending process! The highly flexible E•LDS -System is a technologically convincing solution which rises to this challenge.

From research to actual practice

Practice-oriented research and development is top priority at ECKELMANN. As a technology partner of refrigeration system manufacturers and food retailers, the medium-sized enterprise has for many years played an important part in development and introduction of pioneering technologies.

For further information please click here:

Cooling Award

www.co2online.de/kaelte/

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Federal Minister for the
Environment Dr Norbert Röttgen
awards Dr.-Ing. Frank
Uhlemann and Dr.-Ing. Gerd
Eckelmann the Innovation Prize
(source: co2online gGmbH)

Solar wafer inspection in a split second

The solar wafer production has high demands on quality control. Automatic optical inspection by machine vision systems is therefore of great importance. The business division of image processing & intra-logistics in ECKELMANN AG, Wiesbaden, has developed a system for inline inspection of mono- and polycrystalline raw wafers, which steadily detects errors in geometry, surface defects and dislocations in the crystall structure.
Furthermore, the system measures precisely geometrical characteristics such as edge lengths, corner angles and chamfer lengths of square and pseudo square silicon wafers. The system is applicable of measuring gauge, the detection of its capability can be adduced semi-automatically, due to preprogrammed procedures in the system.

In addition to reliability and accuracy, the new machine vision system impresses particularly with its clock cycle: At two image acquisitions per wafer, the time for measuring and processing adds up to 0.8 sec. Including transport times, up to 3,600 wafers per hour can be examined by the system.

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Solar wafer inspection

Universally usable, wireless temperature monitoring by means of the TS 30 W of series E●LDS

Robust, maintenance-free and universally usable – these are only some of the performance features of the wireless, active temperature sensor TS 30 W of series E●LDS of ECKELMANN AG. Completely independent of the illumination conditions, the TS 30 W can be used for temperature measurement in optional cold storages, such as walk-in coldrooms and freezers, refrigerated multidecks, refrigerated counters or freezer islands in the temperature range between -40 and +80°C. The sensors have a very long life of 10 years and are completely maintenance-free since no battery change is required. Due to their compact, hermetically sealed design, the sensors measure the temperatures in the immediate vicinity of the merchandise and take into consideration the infrared component of the luminous and thermal radiation near refrigerated display cases.

The data of up to 100 sensors each can be acquired by a respective receiver module. Subsequently, this module integrates the data into the proven E●LDS system for refrigeration and building control in supermarkets. Permanent filing, monitoring, automatic analyzing and comfortable evaluation of the measured temperatures is made possible by this system.

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Complete controller and drive package for cutting machines

ECKELMANN AG offers a carefree package of optimally matched control and drive components to all manufacturers of cutting machines. The complete solutions combine the experience of more than 25 years in the R&D of CNC applications with the range of the latest hardware components. The complete solutions can be easily scaled and flexibly adapted to the requirements of the customers.
An individual and cost-optimized control package can be prepared for each customer including all components from the compact-IPC with touchscreen operation, the real-time controller, the modular inputs/outputs to the drive controllers and motors.

The user interface is designed to completely meet the requirements of cutting machines. The user interface supports import functions of different data formats such as DXF, DIN and ESSI, makes comfortable programming on the machine possible by means of a comprehensive macro library and offers automatic functions for sorting and nesting.

The connection of the processor peripherals as a function of the respective cutting technology is easy and can be configured by the machine manufacturer himself. If required, also the free programming of additional PLC function blocks is possible in compliance with IEC61131-3.

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Compact IPC for CNC

A new impetus for the ETHERNET Powerlink Standardiza-tion Group (EPSG)

At the EPSG General Assembly, Anton Meindl from Bernecker + Rainer Industrie Elektronik GmbH was unanimously elected to join the EPSG board of directors.

Anton Meindl (39), Business Manager at the head office of Bernecker + Rainer Industrie Elektronik GmbH in Eggelsberg (B+R), Austria, is responsible for the development of classic memory programmable controllers, distributed I/Os and field busses as well as safety features.

After completing his studies in electronics and industrial engineering in Munich, Mr. Meindl worked in the areas of applications, marketing, project management and production automation with a number of international companies. He joined B&R in 1999 and has been in charge of the Controls Business Unit since 2000.

“ETHERNET Powerlink has already been successfully in use for a number of years. No other system can come close to boasting more than 100,000 installed nodes in around 10,000 mass-produced machines. It is already the leading industrial ETHERNET system on the market”, says Mr. Meindl. “I look forward to working with the EPSG board in order to develop this trend even further.”

In Anton Meindl, the EPSG has one of the most respected experts on ETHERNET Powerlink on its board of directors. As head of the Controls Business Unit at B&R and through his involvement with ETHERNET Powelink from the beginning, he already deserves credit for the success of the protocol.

“In Anton Meindl we have exactly the right person to direct the future development of ETHERNET Powerlink”, explains Dr. Edwin Kiel, chairman of the EPSG. “Together we will consolidate ETHERNET Powerlink’s leading market position.”

The ETHERNET Powerlink Standardization Group board now consists of the following five people:
Dr. Edwin Kiel (Lenze AG), Chairman
Prof. Thomas Müller (University of Zurich, Winterthur)
Andreas Dreher (Hirschmann Automation and Control GmbH)
Prof. Konrad Etschberger (University of Ravensburg-Weingarten)
Anton Meindl (Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH)

ETHERNET Powerlink (EPL) is the only market established real-time Ethernet protocol with micro-second accuracy. It is based exclusively on international standards and there are over 100,000 EPL nodes in use in traditional production machinery around the world. More than 300 facilitators, suppliers and users have implemented ETHERNET Powerlink and over 150 mechanical engineers have completed ETHERNET Powerlink projects.

ETHERNET Powerlink is developed and published by the EPSG (ETHERNET Powerlink Standardization Group), an open organization of users of the automation technology, manufacturers and research institutes. Powerlink offers an open standard for distributed automation solutions based on the Ethernet and CANopen® profiles with accurate real-time response in the micro-second range, high availability and safety mechanisms. EPSG members include, amongst others, ABB Robotics, Alstom, Altera, Baldor, B&R, Hirschmann, innotec, IXXAT, KUKA Controls, KW Software, Lenze, Pepperl + Fuchs and Tetra Pak.

Further information: www.ethernet-powerlink.org

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CNC, PLC and motion control - copy via dongle

ECKELMANN has released the ExC66 embedded controller for CNC, PLC and motion applications (CiA® 401, CiA® 402 and CiA® 406) with CANopen® higher-layer protocol. The controller with CANopen® NTM functionality is based on the MPC5200 processor and can be extended via SD memory card. It provides four CAN interfaces, one real-time capabel Ethernet and USB as well as RS-22 interfaces. I/O modules can be added via the interfaces. The device provides even-triggered, remotely-requested and cyclic Sync PDO modes with 127 TPDOs. The company provides software libraries according to the intended usage of the device (PLC, CNC and MC) including corresponding HMI functionalities. Thus the controller can form three different solutions:

ELC66 (PLC) with programming tool CoDeSys according to IEC 61131-3
EMC (Motion) with additional motion library (up to 12 axes)
ENC66 (CNC) with NC operating system, HMI for PC and DIN programming (12 axes)

The controller can be combined with the company's E·FBM series of I/O modules with 8 -bit controller. The local computing power boosts the response time of a system.

To prevent know how drain form a PLC controller, ECKELMANN released the CAN Dongle copy preventer. It took the idea from the PC world, in which it has been common to prevent illegal copying of software by requiring a hardware dongle on a USB or Centronix interface. Since the company has favored the CAN protocol for a long time, it developed a hardware device to achieve an effective copying restriction for PLCs. With this device, any application software on the company's ExC53 or ExC55 controllers can be protected. The dongle also runs with any other control or motion control device that supports the CANopen® protocol.

The device is equipped with an 8-bit processor and communicates via the internal CAN network with the controller. The controller sends a combination of numbers that are resolved in the dongle-processor according to a pre-programmed formula. The firmware of the dongle however is not readable and thus cannot be copied. The device returns the result of its calculation to the controller that checks it for accuracy. The reaction to this check can be programmed user specifically: the controller may disconnect immediately or change into a safe state. Any error tolerance is programmable. The mathematical formula to check the result is changed cyclically. The controller transmits additional calculation parameters to the dongle from a Flash memory for this. Copying of the application software is thus without any use.

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The new CAN Dongle

New generation of CNC, PLC and motion standard control

The next generation of the ECKENMANN standard control is on the market. The ExC66, as an embedded controller for CNC, PLC and motion applications, complements the family of ExC controllers in the upper performance level.

Apart from the particularly powerful PowerPC processor MPC5200, the technical highlights of the ExC66 include the possibility of convenient and cheap memory extension by means of an SD card. The new controller provides more fieldbus interfaces (4x CAN, 1x real-time capable ethernet), new communication paths (USB, RS232C) and is quickly complemented by local I/O modules. Its openness to international standards such as Devicenet, Powerlink, Ethernet IP etc. make it a flexible central unit for universal use.

Common hardware platform for CNC, SPS and motion control
The universal ExC66 hardware platform, whose communications options ensure usability in the future, can be provided with any of the three proven ECKELMANN software libraries "SPS", "CNC" and "MC" including corresponding HMI functionalities. These software options complement the ExC66 to form powerful complete solutions with a wide range of applications:

ELC66 (PLC) with programming tool CoDeSys according to IEC 61131-3.
EMC66 (Motion) with additional motion library (up to 12 axes).
ENC66 (CNC) with NC operating system, standard HMI for PC and DIN programming (up to 12 axes).

The ExC66 can, of course, be combined with the proven fieldbus modules of the E•FBM series of ECEKLMANN AG.

Datasheet Embedded controller ExC66

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ExC66 Embedded Controller