Well-Suited for Manufacturing Environments with Particulate Generation

National Instruments has announced the launch of the IC-3173 industrial controller, which carries an IP67 rating.

The new controller is suitable for performing as an industrial IoT edge node without protective enclosures in non-particulate-generating manufacturing environments, test cells, outdoor settings, and other extremely harsh conditions. The IP67 rating, which complies with IEC standard 60529, ensures reliable operation even in dusty and humid environments.

This industrial controller is a high-performance fanless device that delivers high-level processing capability and connectivity performance for automated image processing, data collection, and control applications in extreme environments. The fanless, rugged design is equipped with an Intel Core i7 dual-core processor up to 2.2 GHz, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 64 GB storage, four PoE GigE ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and two DisplayPorts, while supporting up to IP67 rating reliability.

Additionally, it includes a user-programmable Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA that provides custom I/O timing, synchronization, control, and concurrent image processing capabilities to enhance system performance.

Jordan Larson, manufacturing engineer at Federal-Mogul Powertrain in the United States, stated, "NI's industrial controller is equipped with flexibly applicable I/O resources, allowing a single controller to address all automation requirements including testing, vision, motion control, and digital I/O." He added, "By utilizing the built-in EtherCAT master suitable for motion and I/O conditioning, we significantly reduced connection and debugging time for all automation machines. Additionally, we achieved substantial cost savings compared to cameras previously used in machine vision. With NI's industrial controller, we reduced the number of components inside the machine and can now maintain all control software on a single platform."

This industrial controller serves as a cornerstone of the NI product line based on TSN (Time Sensitive Networking), which follows IEEE 802.1 Ethernet standards and provides distributed time synchronization, low latency, and time-deterministic general networking traffic. In addition to using TSN for inter-controller communication, engineers can integrate highly synchronized sensor measurement operations using the latest TSN-supported CompactDAQ chassis launched earlier this year.