The market shares of Sercos since 2005
Sercos presents itself in the third technology stage as Ethernet-based field bus, also commonly used under the term Sercos III. How has Sercos been developing in the machinery industry? Quest TechnoMarketing analysed in detail the use of Ethernet and field buses in the German machinery industry 2005, 2008 and 2010. The following analysis regarding Sercos is based on these three Quest studies.
June 11th, 2011 - The Ethernet-based Sercos belongs to the group of real time Ethernet protocols that currently have a market share of up to 10% among the machine-builders.
Beside Sercos, in-house solutions of the machine-builders, Modbus TCP and VARAN still belong to this group. Sporadic single denominations of other protocols are not considered thereby.
Sercos is growing faster than the market
Following the spreading of these four protocols among the machine-builders since 2005, Sercos shows the relatively most positive development.
From 2008 to 2010 Sercos grew as fast as the market for real time Ethernet among the machine-builders. Their planning for 2012 will provide a use of Sercos that will be above the market growth. Consequently the market share of Sercos will increase from 5% to 8%.
In the past machine-builders used Sercos mainly for the connection with servo drives.
„However one also wants to implement Sercos III in order to be able to balance the oscillations of the motors against each other by a more accurate coupling of the servo drives. Then one wants to be able to use an extended diagnosis. Now one receives only error numbers in the case of defects. But one wants to get fault messages in plain language and to also reproduce several axes. So one could access all axes by means of one line during teleservice.“ (Robotics + automation)
To connect with the control of the machine and other drive components different field buses were additionally implemented so far.
„In the future one will use Sercos III for the coupling of the servo drives and for the machines altogether ProfiNet or other real time-oriented protocols.“ (Food processing machines) „One already uses Sercos III for servo drives. In the future, however, one would also like to connect different field devices such as FC and I/0.“ (Rubber/plastics machines)
The advancement of Sercos from a drive bus to an automation bus is the opportunity for the machine-builders to reduce the bus variety or to have a further alternative for the standardised equipment of the machine with an Ethernet-based field bus.
More information about the Ethernet surveys
You will find more information about the Quest studies regarding the use of Ethernet and field buses in the German machinery industry on the website of Quest TechnoMarketing.