With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution and Industry 4.0, comprehensive and intelligent automation came to be defined by advanced controls, monitoring, and diagnostics. Such capabilities are only possible through industrial connectivity — through which controls and machine devices are unified on some platform (such as IO-Link) for continual data exchange.
The key enabling technologies underpinning industrial connectivity are standardized networks and devices with onboard communications features. Protocols abound for these functions. However, not all industrial protocols satisfy the data-exchange and intelligence requirements required by today’s automation. IO-Link was created to satisfy a wide array of these modern applications. As covered in a previous digikey. com article, IO-Link is a wired point-to-point communication
protocol that facilitates smart bidirectional data communication between devices. Typically, IO-Link primaries (local controllers) have several IO-Link ports (channels) into which various IO-Link devices independently plug. These node- to-node endpoint connections are what render IO-Link a point-to-point communication protocol. Launched in 2009 by a consortium of 41 members that is now hundreds of members strong, IO-Link is has become a widely accepted communication protocol to harness data crucial for:
Making use of IO-Link in industrial applications
Written by: Etiido Uko, Mechanical Engineer & Technical Writer + Lisa Eitel, Contributing Editor, DigiKey
Figure 1: IO-Link complements existing network protocols by easily integrating into fieldbus or Ethernet networks via the IO-Link primary. The connection between an IO- Link primary and its IO-Link devices is through unshielded and unscreened three or five-wire cable also capable of supplying power to the IO-Link devices. Here, power from the primary is 24-Vdc. Image source: Pepperl+Fuchs
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