Jürgen Greger, Lapp: "Users increasingly want the complete communication infrastructure from a single source - and that includes the switches."

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"A switch is something like a multiple socket for Ethernet-based networks. For this reason, we have now included this active component in our product range." With this message, Lapp is addressing visitors to the SPS IPC Drives 2017 trade fair. According to Jürgen Greger, the background to this is that users increasingly want to obtain complete industrial communication infrastructure solutions from a single source instead of having to buy individual components from different suppliers: "They want to be sure that all components are perfectly matched. We guarantee this - with worldwide availability of our solutions."

When it comes to switches, a new topic for Lapp, the Stuttgart-based company has entered into a partnership with Moxa, another global provider of active industrial network solutions, which has many years of expertise in the manufacture of robust industrial switches, while Lapp contributes its application expertise from mechanical and plant engineering to the partnership. The switches with the name 'Etherline Access', which will be shown for the first time at the trade fair, are initially available in four versions: Two 'managed' versions, i.e. with configuration options or with five or eight RJ45 ports (M05T/M08T), as well as two corresponding 'unmanaged' versions (U05T/U08T). All devices are fanless and have two redundant connections for fail-safe power supply. The housings are made entirely of metal (including the mounting for the top-hat rail) and have an IP30 protection rating.

According to Greger, a special feature of the managed switches is their integrated ring redundancy, which enables a reconfiguration time of less than 20 ms with at least 250 devices in a network. "The cycle times of a PLC on the machine, for example, are usually longer - this means that the controller is not aware of any interruption in communication in the infrastructure network, apart from the corresponding error message. In other words, production continues without interruption," says Greger, explaining the resulting benefits. Another advantage: the redundant ring can be configured purely via DIP switches on the switch without any programming effort.

This is how it continues with the active components

The four copper-based versions that Lapp is initially launching are only the beginning of a long-term partnership with the Taiwanese provider: "Our roadmap envisages that we will also include devices with fiber optic and PoE ports or with M12 connectors in our portfolio in the next step. We will also support upcoming standards such as Ethernet TSN technology. This also applies to common protocol standards such as Profinet, Ethernet/IP or CC Link IE."

But that's not all: in the long term, there are also plans to develop exclusive solutions and products specially tailored to customer requirements together with Moxa. "Anything that increases the reliability of the data network and therefore the productivity of our customers is something we are interested in - predictive maintenance is one of the buzzwords in this context," says Greger, looking to the future, although he is still cagey about the details.

When asked whether Lapp's commitment to active components will be limited to switches, Greger is also reluctant to go too far out on a limb: "We are concentrating on switches for the time being, but we are listening carefully to our customers and developing the portfolio in line with their requirements. Topics such as routers, firewalls or WLAN access points would of course be logical additions."

And what is happening at Lapp on the 'passive' side? One of the trade fair innovations in this area is the new 'Etherline PN Cat.7' cables. The suffix 'PN' stands for conformity to the Profinet standard; they are also certified for the North American market. What all the new Profinet cables have in common is the high data rate of 10 Gigabit/s thanks to the Cat.7 standard. According to Greger, cables with Cat.6A also achieve comparable speeds, but Cat.7 cables operate at a significantly higher transmission frequency of 600 MHz; this ensures performance and transmission reliability due to higher reserves, even if cables age or become damaged over many years of use.