34 n CONVEYORS AND MATERIAL-HANDLING April 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com Custom conveyor controls help logistics giant to go digital At its Graz site in Austria, the intralogistics specialist SSI Schaefer develops container conveyor technologies. At the end of 2018, its conveyor control product manager Christian Steiner and his team were planning the next generation of conveyor systems, which they agreed would need to be as automated and digitally controlled as possible. Previously, the company, which produces more than 100km of conveyors every year, had used roller motors with analogue controls, but these could no longer satisfy increasing technical demands. The next generation of motorised roller drives therefore had to be digitally controlled. Interroll, the company that supplies SSI Schaefer’s motor rollers, uses CANbus as its eldbus protocol and so the company chose this as its new I/O and controller networking technology. The power supply of the new motors was raised from 24V to 48V, allowing smaller cable cross-sections and longer cables to be used because of the lower losses. This, in turn, allowed the use of larger and more ecient power supplies. SSI Schaefer searched the market for control systems that could oer a CAN connection to the motor rollers, as well as the required 48V power supply and support for Pronet-based communications. The controllers needed to be robust with protection to IP67 to allow direct installation on the conveyor belts. But the ideal technology that met all of these requirements did not appear to be available. “Although it was possible to buy CAN bus controllers, we wanted an solution that was tailored to our needs,” Steiner recalls. At the SPS automation show in Nuremberg, he met a representative from Turck and asked whether it would be able to modify its I/O technologies to meet SSI Schaefer’s requirements. The answer was yes. The result was a device called a CCU (conveyor control unit), based on Turck’s TBENLL-4RM-4DI-4DXP I/O module for CAN roller motors. It provides digital I/Os for external trigger signals or actuators, as well as a 48V power supply for the roller motors, 24V for conventional actuators, CAN communications for the motor, and Pronet communications for PLCs. In addition to the four conventional I/Os, there are four DXP ports that can be used either as inputs or outputs. “The module now enables us to collect more sensor data or – to be more precise – double the number of I/Os compared to the previous module,”says Hansjörg Lerchster, a member of SSI Schaefer’s project team at the time. “We previously had to use additional I/O modules from other manufacturers to collect the signals from the sensors. We can now combine all this together. Bus communication also makes the solution plug-and-play compatible.” The CCU modules are easy to install and commission. “Addresses are now assigned automatically,” Steiner explains. “We have received very good feedback from the plants under construction. The CCU module is easy to install and the error handling is also very good. It directly displays which motor roller is not working. That wasn’t possible with the old technology.” SSI Schaefer began to introduce the new motorised rollers in 2021. It is using them in various products including straight conveyor belts, as well as curves and inclined rollers, through to complex alignment conveyors. The digital CCU modules oer many options for optimisation and automation. The ability to control the modules via both Pronet and I/O signals ensures £exibility and backwards compatibility. SSI Schaefer can retrot its older systems with the new technology. Not only can the motors be controlled more precisely via the eldbus interface, but data such as temperatures or operating hours, can be transmitted in parallel with the cyclical communication of operating data. “With the module’s new rmware, we can control this not only via Pronet, but also via the I/O signals,” Steiner reports. “This enables us to also use the modules in the context of devices with software that cannot yet work with Pronet.” SSI Schaefer and Turck are not ruling out further joint projects. n When the intralogistics giant SSI Schaefer decided to digitalise its conveyor lines, it couldn’t nd the exact technology that it wanted. So it asked a supplier to modify an existing product to meet its requirements, resulting in a customised conveyor control system that met its specications. SSI Schaefer’s new generation of conveyor systems use specially developed CAN I/O modules to control the drum motors and record sensor data
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