Whitepaper | Smart digital input integration for more rugged and safer factory automation solutions

How a self-powered digital input current limiter can ease design integration

As industrial processes become more advanced and connected, factory floor space is typically at a premium and control cabinet and their components must be compact and energy efficient.
As a result, designers of machinery equipment need to find efficient, quiet and compact solutions that meet today's new thermal management constraints, while ensuring the safety and well-being of human workers operating close to new collaborative robots or ‘cobots’.

In this whitepaper, learn how engineers working on a wide range of process, industrial, and building automation applications can better protect their equipment and ensure the safety of their personnel through the use of a robust, low-power approach based on self-powered digital input current limiters.

ST offers a rugged, low-power approach to designing safe, EMI robust solutions based on self-powered digital current limiters.

Takeaways from this whitepaper:

An overview of the transformation of manufacturing and how new automation control systems interface with the real world
Functional safety considerations when managing and integrating industrial digital inputs
ST’s solution and the advantages of a self-powered, non-linear method of digital input integration:
Functional safety features
Ease of design integration
Reliable operation in electrically noisy industrial environments
Self-powered digital input current limiter ICs and developer resources

After reading this whitepaper, the power and dissipation limitations of using a passive discrete component current limiter input for industrial programmable logic controllers will no longer be an issue. A more robust, low-power approach using ST’s CLT03 series of digital input current limiters yields much less heat generation, enabling greater input module density in space-constrained industrial control cabinets, and ultimately, easing SIL certification for final industrial or building automation applications