Yearly Archives: 2019

Modular Electronics Housings as a Modular System

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Phoenix Contact presents a new series of modular electronics housings for control cabinet applications.

The Industrial Case System (ICS) series includes a wide range of overall widths, heights and depths, as well as the optional TBUS8 eight-position DIN rail connectors for simple module-to-module communication.

Users have flexible options for equipping the housing with various connections, such as RJ45, USB, D-SUB or antenna sockets, enabling the integration of countless functions. Different colors, printings and component versions enable individualized and application-oriented device solutions. PCB connectors and the appropriate headers with a pitch of 5.0 mm round out the range of accessories.

The three- or four-position connectors are designed for currents up to 16 A and voltages up to 300 V and enable simple conductor connection using a screw or Push-in spring connection.

Want to find out more? Feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

How Many Cables Can a High Density HEAVYCON Connect?

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It is no secret that HEAVYCON is a great way to install and uninstall control cabinets as it saves you time and money. With HEAVYCON, the time taken to install and uninstall a control cabinet is reduced by 40% while labour cost is reduced by 30%. For applications where re-terminations are required, the savings on time and labour costs are even higher.

This is especially so with HEAVYCON modular, as it provides flexibility and allows for customisation without charging premiums. You can choose any signal, data and power modules from more than 50 modules in our product portfolio and snap them in easily into the newly improved snap-in frame.

When HEAVYCON meets Push-in Technology

Push-in technology is a direct and tool-less connection technology developed by Phoenix Contact. It uses a special contact spring for easy insertion of cables. It was first used in Phoenix Contact terminal blocks. The recognisable bright orange release button enables easy disconnection of cables using simple tools like screw drivers.

Push-in Technology has since been incorporated into HEAVYCON. This is basically an installer’s dream come true as it shortens installation time even more and make HEAVYCON even easier to use.

In 2018, Phoenix Contact had come up with a high density HEAVYCON module with Push-in technology.

This is the game changer as it allows for connection of up to 12 cores cable per module. Combined with a 6-slots frame, it can accommodate up to 72 cores cable in one single connector. This is the highest density heavy-duty connector with Push-in technology in the market to date. Such high density is only achievable via crimp technology in the past, which can be expensive due to investment in the special tools needed.

Also new, the M1 housing caters for application where only one specific module is needed. It eliminates the need for the snap-in frame which reduces the cost of ownership. Now you can get the same amount of convenience and flexibility with less amount of money.

For more information on the development of HEAVYCON with Push-in technology, stay tuned to our blog! If you have any queries, feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

Safety

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Don’t be surprised that safety precautions are the most important activity that is emphasized! In fact, there are an abundance of companies that invest heavily in health and safety.

As an established industrial business, you would not want to be known to operate in a place with high risks of work hazards. And how do the simplest warning labels help in doing so?

1 – Awareness

The key reason of having safety warnings all over a danger zone is to remind people never to let your guard down. This avoids the situation where people are not fully aware of the risk, keeps people alert and reduces the chance of someone injuring themselves. For new people, new employees who are not familiar with the environment, these warning labels serve to help them understand the risks involved.

2 – Compliance

There are a lot of standards and regulations that are laid down by the government and organizations to be in compliance with safety standards. To prevent people from scrimping on small costs for these warning labels, these safety standards are in place to ensure all the right labels and warnings are placed!

Ultimately, it is always beneficial to your business to keep it a safe environment. So there is no need to pay for any worker’s compensation payments, or incur additional costs to cover the injured employee’s scope of work. Of course, keep your business reputation at its tip top condition, being a safe environment for your employees!

Phoenix Contact has a range of plant markings that can be easily customized and printed. Check us out here!

Hey! We are also launching a Snap-Our-Label contest, with WARNING labels as the theme of the quarter. Stand a chance to win a Thermofox Set as well as many other prizes!

To get a free sample of the warning label, click the link below!

https://snapourlabel.phoenixcontactsea.com/

Want to find out more? Feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

E- Mobility Education Kits for Learning EV Charging

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Phoenix Contact E- Mobility group has come up with EV-Charging Kits for training E-mobility EV Charging awareness, which will be used by Technical Institutes and Polytechnics as well as Energy Authorities.

These kits contain the basic main components, as well as build plans for the trainee to understand how to construct a basic EV-Charger based on 16 to 20amp current input and charging at 3.7 kW at 230 VAC supply.

These kits can then be configured into different charging applications to provide a better understanding of EV-Charging Technology.

Contact your local Phoenix Contact office to get the Brochures on this product range.

Kit References are Article No. 1628080 (Type 2 Infrastructure Inlet for Mode 3 Case B) and Article No. 1628077 (Tethered cable Type 2, mode 3 case C)

Charging Mode 3 Case B
Charging Mode 3 Case C
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Want to find out more? Feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

Phoenix Contact SEA’s First Ever Carnival

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Lo and behold… We are holding our very first carnival!

Gone were the days when industrial/electrical components are only seen and talked about in exhibitions and seminars. This is going to be the most interactive, fun-filled event that you’ve ever participated in! We have specially designed activities for you to learn more about products in an exciting way. Goodie bags worth more than 50 EUR are up for grabs during the carnival!

Below is a sneak peek at some of the activities we have planned for you.

Printing Station

Have a hands-on experience of using our software and enjoy the ease of printing our labels through it! You would only be briefed on the products you will be in touch with in this station, and then you will be tasked to produce a print on your own!

Fix-it-Yourself

In this station, you will be tasked to complete an assembly using the tools that are available to you. Here, you would get a chance to experience our very user-friendly and handy tools.

PxC Buildathon

Building a device sounds like too much work? Try doing it from scratch using PxC products! You can also get try out various connection technologies and experience the ease and convenience they bring.

Print x Connect Day will be held in Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore in May, June and September 2019 respectively. So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us if you are interested! If you are from other South East Asia countries, you can also let us know of your interest at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg so that we can bring the carnival to you in due time!

Phoenix Contact PLC Interface Relay

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Phoenix Contact PLC Interface Relay is one of the most, if not the most widely used slim type relay in the market. This can be attributed to the fact that Phoenix Contact is the pioneer of this slim relay and it addresses the requirements of the industry. Besides that, there are numerous features that this range of relay has that differentiate Phoenix Contact from similar competitors.

  • The relay is fully made in Germany. On top of that, the production process is fully automated by machines in an environment with tight quality control. This ensures consistency, precision and high quality.
  • The relay’s internal circuitry is made from a single lead frame. This means that there is no soldering and therefore, no single or odd weak point of potential failure. Consistency is also guaranteed as soldering is mostly done by humans and thus will be susceptible to quality control issues.
  • Furthermore, the single lead frame technology has better heat dissipation and distribution technology over competitor’s product that uses PCB technology. This is because PCB technology tends to have concentrated heat spots that will weaken the relay over time. Phoenix Contact’s design allows for lower overall panel temperature for the end user.
  • The relay is fully encapsulated and certified RT III grade and water and bath tested. This ensures that the relay will survive and operate even after exposure to water and high moisture and humidity. There are other brands in the market that does not have such degree of protection in the relay.
  • The quality used for our components are also rated above the industry standards. Phoenix contact use diodes that are rated at 1300V compared to the 1000V that is typically used by others. This will ensure even higher threshold to withstand unexpected incoming surge.
  • On top of these advantages, the Phoenix Contact PLC Interface relay is also versatile as it can be transformed into a PLC with integrated relay by adding a module called PLC Logic. This solution can be used for applications that require simple automation.

  • The PLC Interface relay can also be used as a system cabling solution that will benefit users in terms of reducing manpower installation time and also reduces space required in the electrical panel. This can be achieved by plugging in a system cabling adapter on the PLC Interface Relay.

Interested to find out more? Get in touch with us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

Finepitch Product Range Part 2

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Missed the first article in this two part series? Read it here!

Stringent requirements

As the number of participants in the field increases, so does the need to network them using information technology, equip them with appropriate electronics and interfaces for signal, data and power transmission, and shield them from harsh environmental conditions. Electromechanical interfaces play an important role here: they are the key to exploiting further miniaturization potential and making devices more reliable and flexible in industrial applications. However, dirt, vibrations, high temperatures and electromagnetic radiation place high demands on passive components.

Phoenix Contact responds to these requirements with a newly developed series of board-to-board connectors with 0.8 and 1.27 mm pitch. Both product families are ideally suited for the device-internal connection of several printed circuit boards. Thanks to horizontal and vertical variants, device manufacturers can implement mezzanine, orthogonal or coplanar PCB arrangements and thus offer flexible electronic layouts for different device applications.

Maximum freedom: Horizontal and vertical female connectors allow mezzanine, orthogonal and coplanar PCB arrangements

Full flexibility

All board-to-board connectors are designed for currents up to 1.4 A and voltages up to 500 VAC; and they offer solutions for 12 to 80 connection poles. Reverse polarity protection is particularly important in the compact pitches to prevent damage to the contact metals when they are mated and to ensure long-term stable connections inside the device. All board-to-board connectors are therefore polarized accordingly – the special geometry of the insulating housing reliably prevents female and male connectors from being mismatched.

Up to 500 mating and withdrawal cycles

The double-sided contacts of both product families make contact on the gold-plated rolled surfaces of the metals and thus guarantee an optimum contact force at all times, even under high shock effects of up to 50 g. Another advantage of the robust design: up to 500 mating and withdrawal cycles are possible without impairing electromechanical stability.

ScaleX contact system: The double-sided contacts provide high stability and allow up to 500 insertion and withdrawal cycles.

The unshielded Finepitch 1.27 series is suitable for stacking heights from 8 to 13.8 mm and, thanks to pre-assembled female connectors with flat ribbon cable, also enables wire-to-board applications, for example for larger PCB spacings.

The Finepitch 0.8 mm series offers particularly compact solutions for high-speed data transmission at up to 16 Gbps. Depending on the application and the required degree of protection, unshielded versions and versions with lateral shielding metals are available for maximum data integrity. Mechanically robust thanks to ScaleX technology. The hermaphroditically designed contacts of the more compact product series allow stacking heights from 6 to 12 mm. The newly developed ScaleX contact system not only guarantees particularly high mechanical stability. It also permits high tolerances for male and female connectors positioned differently for production or assembly reasons. The catch range of the Finepitch 0.8 series is ±0.7 mm per axis, the angle tolerances for mating are up to ±4 degree in longitudinal direction and ±2 degree in transverse direction. These high tolerances compensate the mechanical offset between the printed circuit boards.

Simple solution for SMT processes

The new board-to-board connectors of the Finepitch series are ideally suited for integration into the fully automated SMT process. Specially shaped and tin-plated gullwing surfaces offer a high contact area on the solder pads and thus improve the mechanical stability between the connector and the PCB surface. The soldering surfaces are designed in such a way that they still allow “overhead” soldering. This is always necessary when the printed circuit board is assembled on both sides. The unshielded versions also permit automatic optical inspection (AOI) and are delivered in a taped package for the appropriate process. Board-to-board connectors of the Finepitch 0.8 mm and 1.27 mm series offer ideal solutions for the flexible connection of several printed circuit boards in industrial electronic devices. The particularly robust contact systems allow different PCB arrangements and stacking heights and thus support flexible and modular device designs. Phoenix Contact is thus following the trend towards miniaturization and modularization of intelligence in the field. The great advantage for device manufacturers is that they can obtain tested and reliable device interfaces for the transmission of signals, data and power from a single source and can thus offer highly adaptive devices for the intelligent factory – regardless of the location and local market conditions.

Interested to find out more? Get in touch with us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

Finepitch Product Range Part 1

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Robust Connection

Board-to-Board Connectors for the Industry

In the past five years, hardly any other buzzword has driven the industrial production and automation sector like “the intelligent factory”. Otherwise diverse markets as the USA, Europe and China agree on the implications: Industrial production must become more networked, more efficient, more intelligent and thus more internationally competitive. Robust board-to-board connectors are an important step along this path.

Intelligent solutions for the intelligent factory: Board-to-board connectors allow connections in new dimensions

One of the drivers of a increased competitiveness should be enhanced versions of production resources that lead to higher performance, more flexible production lines and lower manufacturing costs. For the year 2020, various analyses forecast almost 20 billion (IDC, 2016), almost 30 billion (Gartner, 2017) or even up to 50 billion (CISCO IBSG, 2011) IT-networked “things”. Even the most cautious forecast means that in just two years there will be almost three times more things communicating with each other than people.

In addition to the ubiquitous smart devices, these things also include the intelligent devices of the industrial production: controllers, power supplies, I/Os, HMIs and many more. These devices themselves have become more intelligent in recent years. Their electronic components, such as processors, could be produced at substantially lower cost and thus became more powerful and numerous. Together with their components, industrial electronic devices themselves became ever smaller, more powerful and more numerous. As a result, more intelligence from a formerly central and strictly hierarchical unit moved decentrally into the field.

Miniaturized and Reliable: Board-to-Board connectors are used for the internal connection of printed circuit boards

Stay tuned to our blog for the second part of this article, and feel free to contact us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg if you have any queries!

Hannover Messe 2019

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Hannover Messe is truly the centre of the global industrial community. In the month of April, the city of Hannover sees hundreds of thousands of visitors congregating. Leading solution providers and manufacturers often take this event as an opportunity to showcase their innovation in new applications and products. This year, we can still see, undoubtedly, the continuous hype around the initiative of Industry 4.0, and the unwavering push towards its adoption around the world.

What exactly is Industry 4.0?

One might explain this as an industrial revolution where:

  1. A higher level of “Interconnectivity” is necessary with security implemented
  2. There is a need to create a digital twin through “Digitalization”, sharing digital information along the entire process
  3. There is smart system intelligence to allow “Decentralized Decision”

At Phoenix Contact, the COMPLETE Line System, for example, provides control cabinet manufacturers a holistic digitalized solution to plan and visualise their cabinet design and concept, before it goes into production. This will account for an optimized engineering process and improve productivity.

The highly celebrated PLCnext Technology Ecosystem takes automation into a whole new dimension. In collaboration with the ever increasing community of innovators, a digital marketplace has been launched, featuring purpose built-applications for automation, and software libraries to help accelerate PLC programming.

Taking advantage of the PLCnext hardware performance and open software system structure, PLCnext Technology will be a cornerstone for digitalized automation. The digital data can be upload to Phoenix Contact Proficloud, that provides the much needed visualisation (i.e.: augmented reality) across different stake holders of the organization.

Aside from the embrace of new technologies like IIoT, Cloud Computing, Augmented Reality which aid the transformation from the technological perspective, what about the enhancement of operational processes and the skill development the workforce within the organisation?

The Economic Development Board (EDB) of Singapore has launched the “Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI)” and its accompanying Assessment Matrix / Prioritisation Matrix, to provide companies a self-diagnostic tool to assess their readiness and architect roadmap towards this digital transformation.

Source: EDB Singapore

As seen from the above overview, SIRI provides the industry with a much needed guideline that identifies the 3 fundamental building blocks of Industry 4.0, namely: Technology, Process and Organisation.

These building blocks are then sub-categorised into 8 key pillars that represent the critical aspects which the company needs to focus on and subsequently into 16 different dimensions of assessment. The implementing company can then use these tools to evaluate their facility readiness, benchmarking their scores against others in the industry and finally plan and prioritise their implementation.

Interested to find out more? Get in touch with us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!

PSD Signal Towers

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Clear signalling at all times, in all places

Reducing downtime and costs is the only way to ensure a competitive advantage. Unmistakable signalling status of the machine or system states is a crucial requirement. These modular signal towers of the PSD (Phoenix Signalling Devices) product range are characterized by their wide range of alarm signals in optical as well as acoustic modules.

If you require central monitoring of the machine or system status, even in an environment without network infrastructure, you are able to choose between two cost-effective alternatives. The PSD signal tower allows for the connection of a wireless interface and also enables direct or subsequent evaluation on the PC.

The PSD signal tower is also flexible when it comes to system expansion and conversions due the modular design.

Advantages of the PSD signal towers from Phoenix Contact:

Clear status indication

The optical elements are available in a choice of 5 colours with various different signal types.

Clear audible indication

The acoustic elements are available in siren, buzzer and voice output.

Fast installation

A signal tower can be erected or extended without using any tools in a matter of seconds by simply placing the individual signal elements on top of each other and turning the bayonet locking system. This automatically establishes an electrical connection between the elements. The control lines are then connected to the screw or spring-cage terminal blocks in the base elements.

Service life

Minimum LED service life of 50,000hrs which adds up to an estimated lifespan of 6 years if it is in operation for 24hrs a day, 356 days a year.

Various mounting options

The signal tower portfolio is completed by a wide range of mounting elements, which ensure optimum mounting of signal towers according to the conditions. You are able to choose from surface mounting or tube mounting.

High degree of protection

IP65, when installed.

Central monitoring and control

Using the WIN (Wireless Information Network) system, it is possible to simultaneously monitor the status of up to 50 machines at a central point by transmitting the status via wireless elements integrated into the signal towers (slaves) to a receiving element (master) that is connected to the USB port of a PC.

A slave element has a wireless range of up to 300m. The distance of the slave element from the master can be increased by up to 900m with the help of integrated repeater and routing devices.

Advantages of our WIN system:

  • Simultaneous monitoring of a large number of machines
  • Central monitoring is possible, even in area without network infrastructure (example, Ethernet)
  • Can be operated parallel to other wireless applications
  • High wireless range
  • No programming or parameterization required
  • Graphical evaluation of machine status
  • Retrospective analysis of machine status
  • Error messages alarm via e-mail

Optimum detection of machine status

The signal towers are used to indicate the status of the machines or systems, including operating states, start up, normal operating, warnings, error alarm messages, pending critical states, acknowledgement requests, etc. There are also a numerous other applications, such as the status display of access controls and cabinet systems.

Interested to find out more? Get in touch with us at marketing@phoenixcontact.com.sg!