Industria meccanicaAutomazioneEthernet / Bus di Campo > Interview with Koenig & Bauer about Sercos
Stefan Singer, Head of Electrotechnical Departmet at Koenig & Bauer, Radebeul

"Sercos III - supply of peripherals is not so large"

Koenig & Bauer belongs to the worldmarket-leading manufacturers of printing machines. At Radebeul, Germany, sheet-fed offset presses for medium up to suberlarge sheet formats are produced. At this site with 1,600 employees, Stefan Singer is responsable for the Electrotechnical Department and tells about his experiences with Sercos III in interview with Thomas Quest.

Stefan Singer

Mr. Singer, how does the application to Sercos III look like?

May 29th, 2011 - We have equipped among others 4 drives in our sheet-fed offset presses with Sercos III. We have been already using shaftless drives in series production since 2000. The belt feed table and the feeder head are now connected via Sercos III. So these drives can directly communicate with the machine control station. This application improved the diagnosis as well as the remote maintenance of the drives.

It has now been running in such a way for a year and a half.

How are your experiences with Sercos III?

There are no technical problems at all. We are using only the standard functions of Sercos III, not the  proprietary functions in order not to make us dependant. I would describe our application as technically rather simply. This application could be realized also with other real time Ethernet protocols.

Why did you decide for Sercos III?

That corresponded to company’s specifications and the strengths of our drive supplier.

How do you think about the future of your Sercos III application?

The problem lies in the peripherals for Sercos III. In regard to the more strongly spread Ethernet protocols peripheral devices are fairly available and there is also sufficient competition. However, the supply of peripherals for Sercos III is not so large and subsequently the competition is less intensive.

Thank you Mr. Singer for the interview.

The largest sheet-fed offset presses by Koenig & Bauer at Radebeul, Germany, the Rapida 185/205, printing sheet formats of more than 2 m width.
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