With the advent of the era of intelligent manufacturing, the Internet of Things has become a development trend in the industrial sector, and the networking of industrial equipment and machines has become the first step for industrial enterprises to move towards intelligent manufacturing.
To achieve a fully integrated smart factory network architecture, more and more industrial equipment is adopting industrial real-time Ethernet as the control network to enable interconnection between devices.
However, industrial Ethernet is not the same as standard Ethernet. Both require dedicated protocol chips, which are costly and have long development cycles and are difficult to implement. In particular, using high-speed, high-bandwidth industrial Ethernet like CC-LinkIE would be overkill for some small-scale systems that do not require high-speed control.
Is there a more economical and simpler industrial control network? The emergence of CC-LinkIEFieldBasic provides an excellent option for achieving low-cost networking of control devices.
CC-LinkIEFieldBasic was thus developed.
Prior to the release of CC-LinkIEFieldBasic, CC-LinkIE, as one of the earliest gigabit industrial Ethernet protocols in the industry, had been widely used in industries such as automotive, LCD, rubber, and 3C. Its biggest feature is that it enables high-speed, high-capacity communication and seamless integration between systems, ensuring data stability and real-time performance. CC-LinkIE is divided into two network protocols: CC-LinkIEControl for communication between controllers and CC-LinkIEField for communication between controllers and field devices.
With the development of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), traditional low-end and small devices that were previously difficult to network due to development costs and other reasons have begun to have a demand for networking. However, compared to the high speed of the network, these devices value the low cost and ease of use of networking.
Gan Shuang, a senior engineer at the CC-Link Association (China), stated that users always prefer to build low-cost systems using more economical products. While 100Mbps communication speed is sufficient for these small-scale devices to meet control requirements, even these small-scale devices need to be able to visualize connected devices and connect to higher-level information systems. For equipment manufacturers, the goal is to use a single hardware device that can support multiple networks to control development costs, and to be able to develop low-cost slave devices and simple, low-cost master station functionality in the shortest possible time.
Therefore, CC-LinkIEFieldBasic, a bus network based on standard 100Mbps Ethernet, was developed to provide a low-cost control network for small-scale systems that do not require high-speed control.
CC-LinkIEFieldBasic Overview
So how does CC-LinkIEFieldBasic achieve this?
"While ensuring communication with CC-LinkIE, CC-LinkIEFieldBasic enables real-time communication for device control at the network protocol application layer through software. Neither the master nor slave station requires dedicated chips or interface boards; standard Ethernet devices only need the corresponding software to achieve CC-LinkIEFieldBasic communication. This significantly shortens development time and reduces development costs," Gan Shuang further explained. "For users, building a CC-LinkIEFieldBasic network is very simple. Only network parameters need to be set for cyclic communication; no communication programming is required. Device parameters can also be set in a single software program. Furthermore, it can integrate with standard Ethernet TCP/IP communication to create a field network compatible with standard Ethernet. By incorporating a web server function, remote device security and traceability data transmission for information systems can be achieved. This is why CC-LinkIEFieldBasic is simple to set up, connect, diagnose, and develop."
CC-LinkIEFieldBasic is showing its potential.
Since its release at the end of 2016, CC-Link IE Field Basic has gained support from numerous equipment manufacturers and compatible product developers, and has begun to show its effectiveness in actual industrial equipment.
Mitsubishi Electric's Meiling sewing machine, the inventor of the industrial electronic sewing machine, was arguably the first to benefit from CC-Link IE Field Basic. According to Mr. Masahiro Kondo of Meiling, the industrial sewing machine industry is relatively traditional. Due to the complexity of the processes, the level of automation and informatization in this industry is very low, and the sewing machines themselves are not networked. However, as the overall informatization level of sewing factories increases, company managers want to see the real-time operation status of the entire sewing factory, so each sewing machine urgently needs to be networked.
To reduce hardware costs and shorten the development cycle, Mingling chose CC-Link IE Field Basic as the control and communication network to develop the industry's first industrial Ethernet sewing machine, the PLK-J6040R. This sewing machine uses a dedicated controller for motion control via CC-Link IE Field Basic, increasing the number of axes controlled from five to seven, achieving a higher level of sewing quality. Previously difficult curved or large-size sewing can now be done "beautifully, quickly, and simply." Furthermore, this sewing machine boasted the world's highest sewing speed and capacity at the time.
Mitsubishi Industrial Electronic Sewing Machine PLK-J6040R
Of course, the biggest feature of this PLK-J6040R sewing machine is its ability to achieve seamless Ethernet connectivity through CC-Link IEFieldBasic. Information such as sewing machine operating time, efficiency, equipment usage, warranty status, and maintenance can be uploaded to a host computer in real time, enabling information visualization in the sewing factory. Enterprise managers can not only see the overall factory output, energy consumption, production quantities and malfunctions of each process, but also analyze and optimize this collected data to predict machine failures and perform predictive maintenance, which will greatly benefit subsequent production planning and even overall business operations.
The PLK-J6040R using CC-Link IEFieldBasic, combined with Mitsubishi Electric's FX5U programmable controller and SoftGot software, enables data visualization of sewing factories on any display screen, meeting the information needs of personnel at all levels of the factory.
Mr. Toshiaki Fukuda, who was in charge of the control network design for this sewing machine, said when talking about his first use of CC-Link IEFieldBasic, "Because we can achieve real-time communication through software programming, the controller CPU's built-in Ethernet port not only saves us from needing a dedicated chip and a communication module, but also greatly speeds up the development and debugging time. The 100Mbps bandwidth is sufficient to meet the control requirements of the sewing machine."
CC-LinkIEFieldBasic Launch in China
In fact, after more than two years of promotion, some manufacturers in China have already begun developing CC-LinkIEFieldBasic products. Tianjin Sentenai Electronics was one of the first to take the plunge. This manufacturer produces sensors, encoders, bus communication protocol I/O modules, and connectors, with products widely used in industries such as metallurgy and automotive manufacturing. Currently, Sentenai Electronics has independently developed a remote I/O module for CC-LinkIEFieldBasic.
Tianjin Sentenai Electronics pioneered the development of CC-LinkIEFieldBasic's remote I/O.
When discussing his experience developing CC-Link IEFieldBasic, Yao Jinlong, an engineer from Centena Electronics responsible for the product's development, stated that firstly, since CC-Link IEFieldBasic is merely an application-layer program, it has no specific processor requirements and can be implemented using a general-purpose processor in software, thus saving the cost of a protocol chip. Secondly, the development difficulty and timeline were significantly reduced. With technical support from the CC-Link Association, including development documentation, source code templates, and sample programs, the source code development using C language took only two months, and it passed conformance testing earlier this year.
"Furthermore, and more importantly, other industrial Ethernet implementations rely on purchased protocol chips. We don't understand or master the protocols within those chips, so if customers have specific needs, it's difficult for us to leverage our capabilities to meet those requirements. CC-LinkIEFieldBasic development is different. The entire protocol is based on our own source code, so we know all the functions and data volumes. If customers add new features later, we can easily make the necessary changes," Yao Jinlong emphasized.
According to Gan Shuang, in order to support the development of its member companies, the CC-Link Association not only provides development code for free, but also waives the fees for compatibility testing of its products.
Besides domestic manufacturers like Centenario that have already developed CC-Link IEFieldBasic products, many international manufacturers such as Balluff, CKD, HRS, Mitsubishi Electric, Molex, and Phoenix Contact have also launched CC-Link IEFieldBasic compatible products in China. According to Xu Wei from Mitsubishi Electric's Servo Product Department, all of Mitsubishi Electric's new FA products, including PLCs, controllers, servos, inverters, HMIs, remote I/O, and industrial robots, now come standard with CC-Link IEFieldBasic support. This will greatly expand the CC-Link IEFieldBasic product ecosystem and lay the foundation for its widespread application in the future.
With more and more manufacturers joining the market, more and more users are beginning to experience the benefits of "economical and practical" networks. CC-LinkIEFieldBasic, designed for low-cost network control, will find its unique position in the era of smart manufacturing, shine brightly, and become an indispensable part of future industrial communication networks.
