Open Core Interface Streamlines Bosch Rexroth System Development

April 19, 2014
Open Core Interface creates the conditions for an economic integration of the motion logic systems IndraMotion MLC and IndraMotion MTX and the PLC family IndraLogic XLC.

Production control, traceability, quality assurance and the vision of connected industry require a stronger flow of information from automation to the IT world and back. Open Core Engineering from Rexroth with the interface technology Open Core Interface simplifies this exchange considerably. Users can now access all information of machine controls without any PLC knowledge directly from their familiar IT programs and languages.

Fast detecting and analyzing production data with the Office program Excel directly from the machine: Where machine users used to have to allocate comprehensive programming work to IT service providers, they now simply write a macro with the familiar Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Through the interface technology Open Core Interface, they can access data of the controls and drives of a machine directly – without PLC knowledge or required changes to the PLC program.

This reduces cost and increases flexibility, to collect and analyze production data according to the demands with any program outside of machine automation. The new interface technology provides the respectively appropriate functional libraries as an installable software development kit (SDK) for different programming environments. In addition to VBA, the Open Core Interface supports regular high-level languages such as C/C++, C# (.NET) as well as all programming environments with integration of Microsoft COM-libraries.

The lean protocol structure and the integration of Open Core Interface into the control core also preserve the processing capacity of the machine controls even during large data transfers. This ensures full performance of the control without side effects. Via the Ethernet-based data highway, users can detect the energy consumption of all machines in parallel with running production and detailed according to individual actuators, analyze availability data for the calculation of the Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) or manage production data with Excel in a decentralized way.

Open Core Interface therefore creates the conditions for an economic integration of the motion logic systems IndraMotion MLC and IndraMotion MTX and the PLC family IndraLogic XLC by Rexroth with IT systems. This opens up potential that can be implemented immediately for the step-by-step introduction of connected industry processes, even in production environments that are already installed.