What technical trends do you currently see in drive controllers?

Stephan Scholze: We see four main trends in drive controllers: drive-integrated safety, predictive maintenance and condition monitoring, cybersecurity as well as the digital twin and virtual project planning.

The topic of safety continues to be incredibly innovative and is far from being at the end of its development cycle. It has established itself in recent years and is now beyond question. The sales shares have far exceeded all expectations. A machine without the useful features that only Safety Technology makes possible will not be competitive sooner or later.

There are several trends in drive controllers when it comes to safety. Machine manufacturers currently have significant integration costs for safety. Reducing this is a significant advantage. Examples include safety functions that do not require a safety-related encoder or fault exclusion for mechanical attachment (FMA). It is also a challenge to achieve a sufficient level of availability, performance and robustness while increasing safety. Finally, the further expansion of connectivity, i.e. controllability from a wide variety of control systems, should be mentioned here.

What about predictive maintenance and condition monitoring?

One of the focal points of digitalization in industry is increasing availability and therefore productivity. Reliable data on the condition of systems and machines is essential in order to be able to monitor the condition of production systems, but also to plan maintenance and service better. However, it should be noted that additional sensors for monitoring also add further assemblies that are potentially at risk of failure.

With the Virtual Lifetime function, Stöber is therefore pursuing the concept of using a physical mathematical approach to determine the lifetime performance of the drives based on existing data and systems. The data determined is stored in parameters in the drive controller and can be easily exchanged with a higher-level controller, for example via Profinet. The load data determined for the drive over its service life can also be made available for evaluation.

What role do the digital twin, virtual project planning and cybersecurity play?

There is a growing trend to simulate machines as comprehensively as possible before they are built, i.e. to test their functionality digitally. For our products, this means providing extensive CAD data. We will be demonstrating the implementation of this topic based on the TIA automation platform from Siemens at the SPS 2022 trade fair.

Last but not least, cybersecurity is also an important topic for drive controllers.

What unique selling points do the drive controllers in the SC6 and SI6 series with the new safety module have on the market?

With the new safety module, we are rounding off the connectivity of the safety functions in the SC6 and SI6 series. Profisafe has now been added to the control via terminals and Fail Safe over EtherCAT (FSoE). Machine manufacturers can now freely select the control for the entire G6 drive controller family and thus meet the requirements of end users.

An absolutely unique feature of all our safety functions is the simplicity of the encoder used. A safety-related encoder or fault exclusion for mechanical mounting (FMA) is unnecessary.

Cyclical testing of the safety technology, which interrupts production operation, is also not necessary. The test is carried out internally and without affecting the operation of the machine.

Last but not least, all components are certified. Both Profinet and Profisafe have current certificates.

What significance do Profinet technologies and the Siemens automation system have for Stöber's drive concept?

Stöber drive controllers have supported the Profinet interface since 2011. Profinet is the most important interface for integrating our drive controllers into our customers' automation systems. In addition to the certified Profinet connection, our customers today also expect a connection to Profisafe and the availability of Profidrive technology.

We support our customers in their desire to create and maintain the automation completely via the TIA portal by making the SpeedAxis, PositionsAxis, SynchronousAxis, CAM and Kinematics technology objects available via Profidrive, for example. The consistent implementation of Profidrive technology makes it even easier to integrate precise movement with drive systems from Stöber into the world of Siemens automation.

What roadmap is Stöber pursuing for drive controllers over the next few years?

We have many interesting and challenging topics in the pipeline for the next few years, including axis digitalization, digital twins, the expansion of predictive maintenance system solutions, the expansion of extended safety functions for Profisafe and FSoE as well as security solutions.

What does the development towards Industry 4.0 and IIoT generally mean for the connectivity, safety and cybersecurity of drive controllers? Which IIoT communication standards will become relevant for drive controllers and to what extent must drive controllers be protected against cyber attacks?

The development of industrial communication towards OPC UA is already underway. This will enable end-to-end communication via OPC UA and simplify vertical communication in systems and machines. This will also have an impact on predictive maintenance and condition monitoring solutions in order to achieve high availability and productivity through optimized service and maintenance concepts. In addition, MQTT will find its way into certain areas of machine and drive communication - a technology that is particularly suitable for diagnostic and maintenance tasks.

Nowadays, all communication in modern systems and machines takes place via Industrial Ethernet. Most of them can be maintained remotely via networks and the Internet and are therefore sensitive to external influences on the function of the system or machine. Automation solutions must therefore not only focus on functional safety, but also on security in terms of data availability, integrity and security.

As part of the cyber security process, Stöber is working on practical assistance such as "Security Guideline" and "Defense in Depth" as well as technical solutions. We are currently subjecting all our products to so-called "cyber security risk assessments". This takes into account the IEC 62443 standard. As a first step, we are aiming for security level 2 - and of course already have our sights firmly set on level 3.