The world-wide EtherCAT Technology Group (ETG) is continuing to grow, with 1,195 member companies from 48 countries now signed-up to use the ethernet factory communication protocol in their products.
According to ETG, the rapid growth of the group to 1,195 members is equivalent to 314 new members per year.
Though most ETG members are located in Germany, where EtherCAT originated, members are also prominent in the United States, Japan, China/Taiwan, and Australia.
A large percentage of the members actively invest in EtherCAT technology: altogether more than 900 implementation kits have been sold, ETG says.
More than 50 vendors are either already shipping EtherCAT servo drives or have announced such products in public, the Group says.
Over 70 vendors offer EtherCAT master devices such as PLCs, PC-based controls, CNC and embedded controllers, using more than 15 different real-time operating systems to implement them.
EtherCAT is a new standard for real-time performance and topology flexibility, which was designed to meet or undercut the performance of traditional fieldbus cost levels.
EtherCAT features include high precision device synchronisation, cable redundancy options, and a functional safety protocol (SIL3), ETG says.