We've tested ETHERLINE® GUARD

Our solution for data cables: ETHERLINE® GUARD

As experts in the field of connection technology, we have addressed the topic of predictive maintenance to develop solutions for anticipating the service life of cables in the industrial environment. Learn about our customers' experiences.

TAJMAC-ZPS, a. s.

"We had the device plugged in and tested it on one of our machines here in the hall. We evaluated that the ETHERLINE® GUARD fulfills its purpose. I see a positive for measurements on PROFINET. For other Ethernet cables, it is an unnecessarily expensive component for the machine. When the cable does not run the device will fail and we will quickly find out the cause through the SW of the system.

I can imagine the use for cables for long routes in a harsh environment, running for example across the hall. For us, a module with wifi would be much more convenient because of faster diagnostics. Otherwise, regarding the setting of the Etherline® Guard monitoring limit, during the testing period we never got the impression that the cable was deteriorating (an outage occurred). For us, as a manufacturer of machine tools, I can imagine that I would use Etherline® Guard in a headstock, where there is less access to the cables and there is more movement in the cable carriers, and therefore also the theoretical degradation of the cable and deteriorating properties of the cable itself. This is where diagnostics would make the most sense for us."

Continental Barum s.r.o.

Ing. Martin Kunz, Electrical Design Department

"In September 2022, we were contacted by LAPP to see if we could put their new ETHERLINE® GUARD PM03T device into operation for testing, which evaluates the quality of the communication signal of the Ethernet standard.

We selected the machinery, an automatic wing machine, which is controlled by a Beckhoff PLC with an EtherCAT communication protocol. On this machine, the last communication "head" on the rotary table is located, and therefore there is the greatest probability of "aging" the cable under regular mechanical stress.

ETHERLINE® GUARD was installed on the machine on September 22, 2022, Teach-In was performed using the button on the device and the machine was started. During the Teach-In, communication was interrupted for a short time as described in the manual, the machine went into STOP state, but then restarted without problems.

In February 2024, we recorded a fault message (digital output Q1) indicating a deteriorated quality of the communication signal. In the TwinCAT environment, we checked the online diagnostics of EtherCAT communication, where we found that there are no losses in communication (Lost frames: 0). So we did the Teach-In again and started the machine after restarting.

We will further test the ETHERLINE® GUARD device on the existing equipment."

MTS, spol. s.r.o.

"We ordered the device so that we would be able to use it in case a specific device were to fail on the project, for example a camera located on the robot. At the moment, we have not used it directly in operation. It helped us in detecting the problem with the communication failure of the aforementioned camera on the robot , where we tested different cables and their quality, adjusted the cable attachment and the trajectory of the robot, and managed to eliminate outages. We currently have the device ready for similar cases."