AUTOMATION SUPPLIERS TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION

Most of the manufacturers of devices for industrial automation and most of the providers for factory automation and for control systems provide a technical support for the final users. This support generally consist of technical documentation such as user manuals, installation and setup guides, programming manual.

It can consist of software, of downloadable drivers or dedicated forums too.

Allen Bradley / Rockwell automation is a worldwide leader in automation systems and in automation devices ( controllers, drives, MMI ), in industrial communication networks and in electricity.

• The full technical documentation is very large and offers all what you need.
• In the folder systems and technical support, you can access a list of services, such as downloading drivers or software, downloading networks resources ( such as instruments description files DTM, EDS or GSD for instance ), downloading firmware updates, analysis tools or configuration tools.

www.rockwellautomation.com

The Cognex company is the world leader in machine vision manufacturing.

• The company delivers all the technical documentation for the Cognex products, and all the technical documentation for the DVT products, with various downloads such as firmwares, tools and more.

www.cognex.com

The eWon products allow an automation technician to send and receive industrial data easily ( from programmable logic controllers, sensors, actuators, data transmitters, machines, instrumentation ) over internet ( servers, remote sites, mobile terminals ).

The eWon communicating data transmitters are well adapted for remote maintenance applications, remote diagnostics, remote management, remote alarms, remote access and remote measuring using an internet gateway and router in association with a web MMI.

• The technical documentation is very rich.

  You will find there the quick start guides, the user manuals ( setup, script BASIC programming and web server development ), installation manuals, knowledge base, application notes, and software available freely by downloading ( such as eVcom to create a virtual serial port client over ethernet for the MS windows OS ).

• You will be able to download freely the ViewOn software, the eWon HTML generator ( using the java technology ). You can download it from the ewon software download area.
• You can also download eVcom ( through the « support » tab ), an amazing tool which lets you create a virtual client serial port. Using it, you will be able to control a remote serial port over Ethernet.

The eWon controllers provide in only one box the functions of gateways, modems, routers, WEB and FTP client / servers, virtual serial port server, expandable analogical / digital inputs and outputs, a lot of other services, and the setup and programming ( script BASIC ) environment and interface.

They basically embed the « Modbus TCP » protocol, the most well known field networks protocols, internet protocols ( HTTP, FTP and SNMP client / server ), communication channels using ethernet, serial ports, one or more modems ( PSTN, ISDN, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, ADSL, WAN ). According to the product, you can also connect safely using « Open VPN ».

www.ewon.biz

The american owner of this irish enterprise has been the first company to design and to develop « all in one controllers ». As an OEM, it provides well known trade mark which are selling the Horner devices under their own name.

These low cost control systems integrate one programmable controller, one LCD touch screen - or a classical one - with various available sizes, digital and analog inputs/outputs, at least one SD card device, standard digital network interfaces ( Ethernet, Modbus RTU, Modbus TCP, CAN bus ) and embedded servers ( FTP, SMTP, Web ) altogether, plus a whole set of options and extensions to expand their abilities. Their performances, their capacity in term of memory and all their other features allow to build quite interesting applications.

When required, it is possible ( especially for special machine or process control manufacturers ) to get customized devices, with the name and the logo of the trademark it is wished to see on the front panels.

The development software run under MS Windows and allow programming both the controller and the operator panel.

Controller side, the development respects the IEC 61131 standard and offers a clean and easy to use programming interface.

The programming environment proposes a quite big library with control functions, logical functions, digital communication functions, data transfer functions and many more.

The IEC standard offers multiple advantages, such as the possibility to write your applications by choosing the programming language you want, among the most currently in use, to be able to write re-entrant functions, to be able to structure and to comment your applications by using data structure, directories and other available methods, all that allowing to build clean code, readable code and maintenable code.

Operator panel side, the development of the applications is very intuitive and very user-friendly. It does not need any substantial effort in learning, while allowing to create fluid, smart and nice user interfaces. It is also possible to develop dynamic web applications stored in the embedded web server, with the intention to be browsed by remote users.

Pre-programmed and configurable templates allow to easily manage alarms, history, data trends, data transfers and other useful common features.

The complete development environment ( that is for both the programmable controller and the HMI ) is updated rather frequently, say around twice a year.

These various « all-in-one » PLC development software versions can be downloaded for free, directly from the web site of the manufacturer. Up-to-date software delivery contributes to make the maintenance easier and to propose the lowest global cost as possible. From the « support » menu, it is possible to download the last updated firmware, open source tooling, and other utilities too.

The full documentation of the Horner PLCs is available in the download directory of the manufacturer's web site. It contains the complete information on both hardware and software matter for the controllers, the operator terminals, the various interfaces and accessories.

https://hornerautomation.com

As a great specialist in industrial measurement, the KROHNE company is the world leader in flow measurement, and the third in level measurement ( 2010 ). Its range of industrial sensors includes density sensors, pressure sensors, conductivity and temperature sensors too.

Worldwide well known, the Krohne company gives a great importance to the quality provided for its products and services, as well as in research and development to keep innovating capacities.

The technical resources in sensors and instruments provides a lot of interesting informations.

• You will get there the quick services guides, the user manuals, various conformity certificates, the technical specifications, and devices description files to exchange data through many protocols and instrumentation networks generally used to exchange data.
• You will find some very interesting didactic documentation too, ( pdf file formatted, see the « fundamentals » section ) about some sensors technologies ( the document which explains the fundamentals of radar technology for level gauging or the document which presents the fundamentals of ultrasonics flow measurement for industrial applications for instance ).

The Krohne products are all compatible with the FDT technology and with the DTM technology, and they are all compatible with the PACTWARE configuration and diagnostic software.

www.krohne.com/en/

The Lenze company is specialized in motors, drives, inverters, reducers and gears manufacturing.

• Its on-line support provides all the technical documentation related to the inverters, to the drives and the others systems for installing, configuring and programming.
• There you can download software and updates too.
• More, the company displays training courses in video format about its own devices or about some specificities met in some motion control applications.

www.lenze.com/en-gb/

National Instruments is a leading manufacturer in the world concerning instrumentation and automation, both for the hardware and the software points of view.

In the technical support, you can access a very big set of technical informations about instrumentation, signal processing, measurement technologies, plus the manuals of the own products of the company. You will find there products manuals, a knowledge data base, tutorials, technical forums, updates and samples of codes to download.

www.ni.com

Phoenix contact is well known company in the area of connection devices and interfaces and in the area of industrial networks. The company proposes a complete range of industrial programmable logic controllers ( PLC ), safety controllers and servers.

Technics evolves continuously, and it is to be noted that by the time now, the whole offer of Phoenix contact PLCs within the PlcNext technology is operated by a Linux system. That does not mean that these devices are open source hardware, indeed, but that they are able to allow access to the new information technology ( OPC-UA, MQTT or machine learning for instance ), safely ( convenient with the 62443 IEC standard plus the potential offered by the Linux kernel ), with high performances, by using the Linux eco-system, thanks to all its actors.

• A first advantage for companies and control engineers is that a quite complete part of the software development kit ( PlcNext Engineer with embedded PCWorx ) is downloadable freely, without any cost nor registering. And so far for many software modules available in the PlcNext store.
• A second advantage is that the system benefits of all the potential offered by the Linux environment. Particularly for all the matter that concerns task and data synchronization in a multi-task / multi-processor environment for example.

  So, the native configurable inter-task dialog embedded mechanism allows robust data integrity and robust data consistency for the exchanges operated between several tasks and several processors ( according to the devices in usage ).

• A third advantage consists in the possibility that the SDK ( PlcNext Engineer ) can be installed and operated under a Linux operating system ( within the Eclipse environment ) and so can benefit of all its potential. Say, development software is no more exclusively limited to run in a Microsoft system.
• This openness allows to execute tasks programmed in C language or in C++ language and applications developed by using the Matlab / Simulink environment too, which are able to dialog with your functions coded with one of the languages proposed by the 61131-1 IEC standard and running in other tasks.
• For applications which need heavy computations for embedded machine learning ( Tiny ML ), the manufacturer proposes a module operated by a Celeron processor and high performing TPU processors.

  The machine learning apps needing less computation benefit of the C++ language programming possibility by operating directly a model generated with TensorFlow Lite for instance, or one of its alter ego, without any dedicated accelerator.

• Finally, this system benefit of an active and dynamic community of developpers, engineers and technicians grouped in the PlcNext community, and it benefit of an online PlcNext Engineer help too.

www.phoenixcontact.com

The Pro-face company is specialized in operator interfaces ( HMI ). The firm is a part of the Schneider Electric group.

The online support delivers all the documentation and manuals for its products, with many downloads such as drivers, electrical drawings and software to try.

www.pro-face.com

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Schneider Electric is a major company in the world of automation. The company provides systems in the areas of automation and electricity. The technical services it serves is prolific for almost all its trademarks ( Schneider Electric, Modicon, Telemecanic and so on ).

• In the technical documentation, you will find many detailed technical data bases, the user manuals, the installing and programming manuals for the current products ( Schneider, Modicon, Telemecanique and all the other trademarks owned by the the Schneider company ).
• You will also find technical manuals for the former range of PLC, the TSX line 7 ( TSX 17, TSX 47, TSX 87 controllers ), for the Uni Telway networks, for the former range of operator panels ( XBTA, XBTK, XBTC, CCX 17 ), for the former development environments ( XTEL, XBTL 900, XBTL 1000, Monitor 77, Monitor PRO, Orphee ) and for former inverters of the Altivar range ( see the « product range A-Z » list ).
• The company offers a very big piece of knowledge too, by publishing its Schneider Electric technical papers freely.
• The Schneider Electric company provides also many technical papers on the Modbus Networks ( as it was created by the Modicon company, now part of Schneider Electric ).

www.se.com

SEW is a specialist manufacturing motors and frequency inverters. It also provides programmable logic controllers and industrial networks solutions.

The technical documentation serves the installation manuals, the programming manuals and the drivers for the speed drives, for the motion control devices and for the automation devices it currently builds ( Movi-PLC, MoviAxis, MoviDrive, HMI Builder ). All the documents are available in many languages, particularly in german, in british and in french.

You can also get freely many other files :

• Movitools and Movitools Motion-studio, including PLC editor ( to program the Movi-PLC programmable logic controller ) et the software to setup the axis controllers Moviaxis and Movidrive.

• MMI builder for the Human Machine Interface programming.
• Various drivers.
• GSD files ( equipments descriptions for Profibus-DP ).

• GSDML files ( equipments descriptions for Profibus-IO ).
• EDS files ( equipments descriptions for CAN bus ).

www.sew-eurodrive.com

The Siemens company is a world leader in manufacturing automation devices, control systems, industrial networks, electricity equipments and instruments. The size of its technical support equals the size of this industrial group.

In the automation and drives technical support, you will get :

• FAQ, files, manuals, application examples and programming examples ( which you can embed in your own code ), software and drivers updates ( select what you are looking for in the « entry type » field ).
• For the following areas : Automation technology, drive technology, safety systems, industries and services ( select the area you are looking for in the « product tree » field ).

Then, if you are coming up against a problem, you can submit it on the technical forum or to one Siemens expert engineer.

The Siemens company has published a security patch for WinCC to prevent against the Stuxnet virus, with systems tests tools and operating systems updates.

www.automation.siemens.com

Wago is one of the first leader of connection devices and of hardware interfaces in the world. It provides high performances solutions in automation and in control systems too.

• The user support for automation equipments serves all the documentation related to its systems.
• You can also get further documents ( on the environments of development Codesys and Codesys 3 for instance ), application notes, or download software.

https://www.wago.com/gb/