Alfa Laval’s next generation ThinkTop V50 and V70 hygienic valve control units now have an IO-Link to enhance communication between the valves and Industry 4.0 automation systems.
The point-to-point IO-Link communication protocol connects sensors and actuators, regardless of fieldbus, to automation systems. This enables real-time data exchange, improving diagnostics and simplifying configurability and control. The ThinkTop IO-Link is designed for use in the dairy, food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. The company says customers will have all the benefits of newly reengineered Alfa Laval ThinkTop plus valuable benefits like more data, higher productivity and higher yields. Other benefits include shorter installation times because of the M12 connectors and automatic recording of the hygienic valve stroke duration. Smarter time adjustments are enabled by the ability to assign priority to critical data and flexibility is enhanced with the capability to change data and process parameters from a remote automation system.
There are also clearly visible LEDs, optimised valve cleaning and a pressure shock counter for almost instant detection of valve movements.
