Many industrial manufacturers are looking for ways to reduce their power consumption both to reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Industry accounts for over 40% of worldwide energy consumption and 65% of its power demand comes from electric motor-driven systems. One way to reduce greatly reduce the energy required to run motor systems is to use what are called “VFD”s. Read more
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As industrial manufacturers and operators continually work to be globally competitive, one area they look at for cost and efficiency savings is network infrastructure. The magnitude of the change happening with industrial infrastructure is very large — and the opportunity to play a small part in this change is one reason I have recently moved from our Tofino Security brand to the Industrial IT group. For those of you that don’t know me, I headed up the Tofino Security marketing group for five years and had the privilege of working with Eric and Joann Byres to pioneer a new approach to industrial security for the plant floor. This involves dividing networks into zones of equipment with similar security requirements and then protecting those zones with firewalls designed for industry such as the Tofino Industrial Security Solution. A key aspect of the Tofino solution is that it is designed to be simple to implement and maintain for those who work on the plant floor. Read more
These days, Ethernet and other industrial networks are fast replacing hard wiring in machine and robot builder OEM applications. Navigating through GarrettCom’s breadth of products—from managed and unmanaged Ethernet switches to routers, terminal servers, and The Product Selection Guide can help to get you started as you consider environmental factors including ingress protection ratings, specific test compliances, convection cooling, and conformal coating. Configurability might be another product consideration. How many fiber or copper ports or available? Which AC and DC power options are available? How can you mount the product? To get started with the GarrettCom Product Selection Guide, click here. Navigating through GarrettCom’s breadth of products—from managed and unmanaged Ethernet switches to routers, terminal servers, and media converters can be daunting. The recently released GarrettCom Product Selection Guide will help you to navigate through the products to help you focus on the best choice for your application. This 12 page guide highlights areas such as how many and what type of ports each product features, what temperature the product is best suited for, and what certifications the product has. Read more Our Investor Relations department recently conducted a webinar on our Industrial Networking business featuring Wolfgang Schenk, VP and Gm of our Hirschmann brand, and Peter Frohlich, our director of business development. While the original audience for the webinar is our investor community, it is a great overview of the business for our customers and partners as well. It gives an overview of the numbers that drive our growth and important global trends in industiral industries. Take a look at the webinar and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. A good friend and co-worker recently said the tone of a recent article I wrote was “snarky”. I’ll take the best definition I could find… “mildly sarcastic and pointed” as his intention since he really liked what I wrote. For you that means that I avoid the big pretty words, keep it simple and tell it like it is… or how it should be. That’s how I’d like to learn about things – I’m guessing you’re the same. So here goes my first exception to the rule by talking about a big word…. Infrastructure! You’ll see a lot of discussion from Belden about industrial Ethernet infrastructure. That’s code for “a network you designed” and the opposite of “a bunch of switches I strung together that works.” While Ethernet is awesome and often lets you add switches until something breaks, there are some exceptional reasons to design a real industrial network infrastructure: Read more
The Magnum 10C is part of the GarrettCom brand’s 10-Series family of next generation substation offerings specifically designed for power utility applications and other extreme environments. The new substation computer meets or exceeds the IEC 61850 and IEEE 1613 global standard to support substation communications needs with error-free operation. Read more  The automotive industry is a vital piece of the economy. A recent article in Automation World tells the story of one Tier-One automotive manufacturer, American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. (AAM) as they set out to reduce downtime, improve productivity and lower costs.
 This story has a happy ending for all involved. Focusing on finding a vendor that could provide quick deployment, global reach and hardened networking products, AAM found their EtherNet/IP provider in Belden. As the Jeff Smith, technical engineering lead at AAM, points out in the article, that the ability to replace multiple fieldbuses with a single solution was key to their decision. |
For harsh environmental conditions such as those found in a power utility substation, only a hardened computer purpose-built for the environment will do. The Magnum 10C is designed to enable mission-critical applications to withstand extreme temperatures, power surges and fast transients, as well as other issues present in harsh environments. Options include a sealed chassis and convection cooling using a patented thermal design.