The IEC 61800-5-2 standard defines safety-relevant functions for drives. With these functions, you can achieve safe stopping of the drive, such as Safe Torque Off (STO) or Safe Stop 2 (SS2), or safe monitoring of motion, Safe Limited Speed (SLS). With these features, dangerous movements at startup or during manual interaction with a machine can be avoided or limited in a safe manner.

Based on the functions defined by IEC 61800-5-2, a control word is specified for separate activation of these functions within the drive. Each function is represented by a bit in the control word. If a safety function is selected and operates within its boundaries, it is reported back to the supervision safety logic with a status word. All communication makes use of the underlying safety protocol.

The configuration of the safety-relevant drive functions is also standard within the profile. The EtherCAT Technology Group also intends to make the Safety Drive Profile available to other interested organizations and technologies since, by design, the profile is independent from the safety bus system being used.

The EtherCAT Technology Group
www.ethercat.org