EtherCAT Box

With the moisture- and dust-resistant EP2338 EtherCAT Box, Beckhoff has extended its IP 67 I/O system with a dynamic 8-channel digital variant. The  EP2338 EtherCAT Box has eight freely selectable digital inputs or outputs. The filter constant of the inputs is 10 μs. The outputs handle load currents of up to 0.5 A, are short-circuit-proof and protected against inverse polarity. If a channel is used as an output, the input is read back in parallel and can additionally be used for short-circuit analysis. This way, engineering efforts and spare parts inventory can be simplified significantly. With these compact modules, which measure just 126 x 30 x 26.5 mm (H x W x D), the performance of EtherCAT at 100 Mbit/s is retained down to each IP 67 box.