Rotork introduces "bumpless" Profibus Highway Termination Module

Rotork introduces the latest addition to its Profibus catalogue, the Highway Termination Module.

Valve actuation specialist Rotork was proud to co-sponsor the annual UK Profibus Users Conference, held at Coombe Abbey, near Coventry. This prestigious event, attended by some of Europe's leading Profibus vendors and users, provided the ideal showcase for introducing Rotork's latest addition to its Profibus catalogue, the Highway Termination Module.

Housed in the actuator's terminal cover, the module provides an easy means of connection to Profibus highways, with switchable termination resistors and a "bumpless" isolation mechanism to enable actuator connection/disconnection from the highway without disrupting communications to the other highway devices. It can also be used to provide a cost effective substitution for highway isolator boxes and junction boxes.

The module itself has been specifically engineered to enable connection of both stranded and solid core Profibus highway cables and has four conduit entries to allow both single and dual channel highways to be interfaced to the actuator. The module also maintains Rotork's philosophy of a zero internal stub length, essential for high baud rate applications, by having separate "IN" and "OUT" cabling from the field, via the module, all the way to the Profibus card within the actuator. As expected with Rotork products, the new module doesn't compromise the superior IP68 environmental rating and is available for the entire IQ intelligent actuator product range.

Rotork's prime location within the exhibition area proved to be the ideal spot for highlighting not only the Termination Module but also Rotork's Profibus DP-V1 card capabilities. Rotork demonstrated its Profibus acyclic communications capability using both a Mitsubishi PLC DP V1 master and a standard laptop running an FDT application. Rotork showed how easily diagnostic and maintenance data could be accessed alongside normal slave cyclic communications. Multiple parameters such as valve torque profiles, number of starts, deadband settings etc., are available for access by any V1 master. The DP-V1 capability is included as part of Rotork's standard Profibus card and the DTM and EDD files, needed for V1 communications, are free to download from Rotork's website.