[00:00:00] Speaker A: Our code is not linked to hardware, so in 20 years when you're pulling out old plcs, you have to redevelop the entire application in the new PLC vendor software. For us, the software is totally portable and can run on a brand new pc. Hardware you.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Hello everyone, and welcome to the robot industry podcast. My name is Jim Barretta. We're glad you're here and thank you for subscribing. My guest today is Calvin Wallace. He is the managing director at Beckoff Canada with over 17 years of dedicated service, where his expertise and leadership have been instrumental in the company's sustained success. His over 30 years of experience in automation technology and unwavering commitment have played a pivotal role in the company's growth, making him a driving force in the field of automation and control systems. Under Calvin's leadership, Beckoff continues to thrive in the automation industry, setting new standards for innovation and excellence. Calvin, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Well, I'm glad to be here at Beckhoff Canada head office in Cambridge, Ontario. And Calvin, I was kind of wondering, you and I have known each other for a long, long time. Can you tell me what attracted you to work in the automation industry?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Even as a high school student, I was quite keen and interested in electronics and drafting, actually. So as I finished high school, to me it made a lot of sense to look at robotics industry. It was something that was just emerging in the late 80s, certainly more popular. So that was my path coming out of high school, and stayed in robotics and control since then.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: That's great. Can you tell our audience a little bit about Beckoff, the kind of the company and also the technology?
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Sure, sounds great. Hans Beckoff founded Beckoff Automation in 1980. The company is based in rural Germany. Currently we have over 6000 employees worldwide with representation in 75 countries. Revenue last year is about 1.5 billion euro, which was a 20% increase from the year before. Beckoff is a proudly family owned and operated company. So Hans back office still leads the company from a technology perspective, growing into business globally. And his children are also now actively involved in the business. So we're excited about that. In Canada we have offices, as you mentioned, our head offices in Cambridge, regional office in Laval, Quebec and Burnaby, BC. And hopefully next year we'll have an office in Calgary as well. So we have 38 staff in Canada dealing directly with customers. Our model is direct to market, so we deal directly with machine builders and end users across Canada and systems integrators and support them directly. So we don't use a distribution model.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I have to say that having had a tour of the Beckham facility in Cambridge here headquarters, it's fantastic. It looks like it's something out of Berlin or so. Can you tell our audience a little bit about it?
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Certainly we have some design influence from a headquarters in Germany, which is not uncommon really we're focusing on number one, training is really important when customers are learning how to use new functionality of Twinkat. So a very large training facility here, also a large showroom and demo area so people can see our technology running. And also an innovation lab so where we can do some testing primarily on motion control applications and intelligent product transport systems like XTS and XPlanear.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Thank you. And for some of our listeners, we're going to use the word PLC. You're going to use the word pc. And so can you tell us a little bit about what is the big difference between a PLC device and the pc device that beckoff uses?
[00:03:46] Speaker A: From my perspective, a PLC is a proprietary piece of hardware with fixed or limited functionality. So for many, many years in the even up to into the year two thousand s, it was almost exclusively used for sequential control.
Over the last five or ten years, some of the PLC manufacturers have been able to bring in more functionality like motion control and safety, but generally it's a sequencing machine. PLCs are certainly deterministic, but generally low to medium performance from our perspective, and also expensive considering it's a proprietary piece of hardware. So PLCs often have flat innovation curves because they have to get their investment paid back on their custom hardware. They are programmed, as everybody knows, in later logic or structured text, depending. There's kind of a preference depending on different parts of the world. In general, Plc vendors are very hardware centric. So if you need more functionality, you generally need to purchase more hardware. That's how I define a traditional Plc, a pc based control or an industrial pc. It's more software centric. So this means when you need functionality, it's a matter of adding a software function as opposed to adding more hardware. So you add software functionality into Twincat. Twincat runs on a back off industrial pc, and the industrial pc leverages more advanced commercial technologies so we can leverage the innovation curve of intel and Microsoft every year and really keep our controllers modern. Beck off. Twincat and Ethercat systems are highly deterministic. Obviously, determinism is critical and machine control and most of our customers are programming in ladder logic or structured Texas, often the same programming languages that traditional PLC programmers are used to. We also have more powerful programming languages available. C Plus plus. If the customers need it, but generally 95% of the people are using traditional PLC languages.
[00:05:57] Speaker B: One of the words you mentioned, and I'm kind of assuming a lot of the listeners know what this stands for. But can you just tell us a little bit about Twincat? Because Twincat is kind of the heartbeat of an industrial pc from Beckhoff's perspective. Is that correct?
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yes. It all starts with Twincat, certainly. So, Twincat is a modular software package designed specifically for pc based control. So as I mentioned, continue to add different modules. If you're only doing sequential control, it's PLc only. If you're doing motion control all the way up to vision, to advanced measurement. So it consists of two components, it's programming tools and the runtime. So the programming tools that we provide to our customers at no charge. So the programming tools are royalty free. I mentioned it earlier, we use the traditional IEC 611 31 programming languages, as well as other more powerful languages if required.
Very scalable. So this one programming tool allows you to program our most simple ten IO micro shoebox pc all the way to a 200 active motion control system. And there's a lot of advantages to that scalability because customers are able to reuse their code a very wide range of controllers. They don't have to use multiple programming software packages to do that. And also from a portability standpoint, end users really like that because our code is not linked to hardware. So in 20 years, when you're pulling out old plcs, you have to redevelop the entire application in the new PLC vendor software. For us, the software is totally portable and can run on a brand new pc hardware. So really important for end users as well. The runtime that resides on the pc and ensures that deterministic control.
Windows is still available for the customer to install any Windows application on that pc. So we don't change windows in any way. Use it back off industrial pc, you put the runtime on it, it becomes a deterministic controller and you have all the functionality of the pc. So then customers can expand their automation system by adding non twincat Windows based application to the pc.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: When companies choose Beckov Calvin, say, for machine control, what are some of their big motivators?
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Obviously, that's a difficult question to answer. It really depends on the customer and their application, but I think there's probably five main ones.
Having that single controller to be able to control your whole machine, there's a lot of advantages to that one controller for PLC motion HMI safety measurement.
It's really important. And having the ability to run other Windows applications on the same controller. There are many machines, cells and lines in manufacturing facilities that have both plCs, traditional plcs, and an industrial pc running a Windows app as well. So flattens the architecture. A lot less hardware in your control system, which increases the reliability because there's fewer components and really makes interfacing and programming faster. Twincat and Ethercat, together, the performance and synchronization and simplicity of that is really important. Ethercat is a key technology for us. It was invented by Hans Beckhoff. We're excited. It's 20 years old now. Wow, just last month. So there was a big event in Germany for that. So just another example of beck off creating a technology, creating a global standard. We certainly have deep motion control expertise, so our customers rely on us for that. Not only do we make drive technology, servo drives and motors, and intelligent product transport systems, but we've always been a motion control company, the actual control side of the servo drives since day one, since the mid eighty s.
And I think the final point would be that our customers can rely on us to have a platform that's going to grow with their business often. Like you said, I've been doing this for 30 years. Thanks for making me feel old.
But often when I start dealing with a new machine builder, their machine is often reasonably simple or less complex. And as their business grows and their customers ask for more and more on the machine, we're ahead of that. And we can ensure that the investment they make in their software development can grow with the need of their machines and their customers. So really being able to reuse all their software investment that they've made over the years as their machines get more complex, what are some of the big.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Picture themes that are happening at back off right now?
[00:11:07] Speaker A: I would say continuing to utilize the power of a modern processor. So continuing, number one, would be continuing to add new Twincat three functionality, bringing more and more into that single controller, because pcs every year get more and more powerful or the same power, and less expensive, so the customer can choose which way they need to go. So being able to pull in vision, obviously pull in IoT analytics, high end measurement, robotics, continuing to make it a true centralized controller, at the same time enhancing our entry level products. So I've been doing this for 30 years. I'm a technical guy. I love talking about the fastest machines in the world, and microseconds and nanoseconds and jitter and so on, but there are a lot of applications that are reasonably simple, and so we have a great line of entry level products. And that's something we've been focusing on, the transport systems, very key xts and Xplanar and cabinet free automation, the MX system. Hans back off. Is very excited about that and feels that it is really a game changer for how machine builders can build their machines.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: No, that's great. And you're very focused on back off in Canada. And are there any industries that you've kind of seen grow recently that maybe have surprised you here in Canada?
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Well, certainly the biggest growth area would be the electrification of automobiles and pleasure craft and so on. So not just automobiles and pleasure craft, of course. There's a lot of trend to snowmobiles and motorcycles and cduos and all those things to electrify as well. Perhaps that's not surprisingly, that's a very fast growing industry, but it's a very important industry for us, and it's a newer industry, and that really relies on performance, especially on the assembly and the production of the cells. So the electrification of battery production as well as fuel cell production has been very big.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, certainly some exciting areas.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Very big.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: So let's talk about intelligent transport systems. And I understand that Beckhoff has two unique, innovative solutions named the XTS and Xplanear. First, could you explain what is an intelligent transport system followed by how these products can help your customers?
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Okay, sure.
It really drives from servo technology or drive technology, but it's not simply a standard servo drive and a servo motor. Certainly not. Intelligent transport systems consist of magnetically driven movers, essentially, that follow a program path along integrated motor modules. That's really what it is. That's a mouthful.
Tooling is generally attached directly to these movers. So that allows you to move generally, often into your part. So it acts as a pallet. It's either supporting, holding the part or pushing the part. The motor modules can be straight or curved linear motors like an XTS, or they can be planar motor tiles, like with X Planar. So they're very different technologies. XTS actually is ten years now since we've been promoting and selling XTS globally. XTS has a fixed guide rail system that captures the mover. So it's only one dimensional movement, but in two directions. So left and right, where Xplan R is a magnetic levitation system, which is really cool, really exciting, which is a floating 2d transport system with six degrees of freedom. So you're able to tilt, rotate, raise up and down, left and right and back and forth. So six degrees of freedom. Really interesting machine concepts that are coming.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: From that, I'm going to say it's a sexy transport system and it's intelligent, right. Because you are totally programmable over the speed, the Excel, the D cell, everything.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Yes. Both technologies have feedback just like a traditional servo system. So you can program full path control, speed control, jerk. Just like a standard servo motor or robot would be controlled.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: And of course, they're controlled with back off controls, right?
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Yes. It comes back to our core technology. Really. Our core technology is the combination of twincat, industrial pcs and ethercat. That is really our core technology, and that is the backbone of XTS and XPlanner. So we're using our technology, the same technology that our customers can use to build their machines. We're using that same technology to develop advanced new products, which is really interesting.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: So you've talked before about one cable automation. And what do you mean by that?
[00:15:58] Speaker A: One cable automation, really? The concept is to combine ethercat, or Ethernet based field bus and power on the same cable. So one cable automation uses a hybrid cable. And if you take a look at the cable, depending on the size of the cable, you can clearly see where the power is relative to the ethercat communications. But it's a complete machine communication and power distribution system. So it's not just between a motor and a drive. But the idea is to be able to use this cabling system to distribute all of your machine communications and power throughout your machine, cell, or line. So anywhere between m eight dc 24 connector up to a b 36 connector at 630 volts. So complete machine power distribution is the goal. The connector. The hybrid cable system was developed by back off and released to the Ethercat technology group. Now it is part of the Ethercat standard. So as now, more and more companies can develop products using this same hybrid cable system. So over time, every year, there'll be more and more options. What can be added to the core? It really was the beginning of the MX system. We needed a proper cabling system to be able to build the MX system. So it was kind of the beginning of MX.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And you've been involved in automation for a zillion years, and you know that cabling is a big problem, right? It's a huge expense, all kinds of labor. So if I was to walk in and see one cable automation on a beck off automation cell or a cell that's using Beckhoff, what would I see as a difference?
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Well, you'd just basically be seeing double ended molded cables between cabinets. If there are actually cabinets in the machine, we're going to talk about that exactly. Between cabinets, you would see just a standard single cable connection for all your voltage and all your communication between cabinets. Single connections to robots, to the base of a robot. That would give the robot the power as well as the communication. Single connection to distributed servo drives. So you don't have to have a large cabinet full of servo drives. You can run the power out to distributed servo drives as well. So very simplified, lot less cable trays everywhere. And all that expense and cost to put that together.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Actually, and I'm thinking from a machine builder's perspective, because that's where I used to live, it just lowers the cost of building automation.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: Absolutely.
The labor cost alone and the design cost is much lower when you can design in standardized cable systems for your automation.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: Just plug and play. So we're going to talk about cabinets as well. So I know that Beckhoff very innovative company, and you're looking at these electrical cabinets, they're very big, they're bulky, they're expensive. They can cost like 10% of an automation system, maybe depending on the system, I'm pulling that number out of the air. But tell me a little bit about Beckhoff's innovations there.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Sure. About a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, we introduced the MX system. And it's a technology or a product that Holland's backup has been talking about for a long time. It's something that's been on his radar. Just to give you some history, Beckhoff started building cabinets in the 80s as part of their product offering. And we still have over 1000 people building cabinets for the german market in Germany. So we truly understand how to build cabinets, which is important when you're trying to replace cabinets. So we have that experience. And really what it is is that experience merged with all the product development knowledge that we have with our core technology, which is industrial pcs, I O and Servos. And being able to merge that together. We know how to build cabinets, we know how to build traditional control system components. Now we're putting it together into a single system. So the backplane of the MX system is really important. And then for multi backplane systems, which many of them would be, that's where the one cable technology between the backplanes is key. So now we can pull the power throughout these I O drops, we'll call it, or even servo drive racks throughout the machine. And that's how we pull in the one cable automation that we talked about earlier. The engineering time to design a system that uses MX is significantly less.
The drying package, I believe is around 30% the drying package for this modular system compared to traditional. Obviously, all the designing you need to do to define every point to point that's being wired. The setup time, which might be the design time, is significant savings, but the setup time or assembly time is key. You can use non skilled labor to do this. So there are many machine builders that come to us and say our biggest challenge is we can't build machines fast enough, right. So we can't hire the labor to increase our capacity. Well, this will be an opportunity for them to use more non skilled labor to do that. Electrical installation and maintenance is going to be much better as well. Obviously, you don't have to open up cabinets. It's just a matter of dealing with the devices that are outside of the machine. So overall, we're really excited to see it.
The first production will be happening early next year. So it's on the radar, it's coming soon, but certainly an exciting system for us. So ipcs, I o, servos, vfds, safety is integrated and xts. Actually, you can attach the XTS directly to the MX as well, which is interesting.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: So what do you see as the future for machine and motion controls from your perspective?
[00:22:29] Speaker A: The xplaner magnetic levitation Prague transport system. Really interesting conversations with end users. Innovative machine builders who are trying to find new ways of producing products.
That is going to continue to change what's happening. The cabinet free automation, I think is important for the machine builder as well as for the end user, because there are significant space savings here as well. And floor space is obviously incredibly important.
I think machine learning at the machine level. So having machine learning on your automation controller is really interesting.
It's something you obviously can't do with a traditional Plc. But having that machine learning in your machine controller, a lot of people are trying to figure out how can that help me? How does that help my customers, right, if they're a machine builder? And I think again, continuing to add functionality to incat for what's next, because we have up to 40 cores now in a PHC, so you can do a lot of automation if you can come up with the concept, there's a lot of power there for you.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: Thank you for that. And when you're not selling controls and motion and such, what do you like to do it in your spare time, if you have any?
[00:23:53] Speaker A: I read that and I thought, oh man, I have a sad.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Can we can skip this question too? Coward.
Do you want me to ask that again?
[00:24:02] Speaker A: No.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: Okay, great. With a lot of the technologies and the roadmap that back off is on. Do you see yourself kind of reducing the cost of automation for machine builders?
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Well, certainly that's something we've been doing for 20 years or more with the functionality that we had even with Twincat 220 years ago, was far and beyond what traditional PlC manufacturers were able to do. So we've always been providing a lean, powerful solution for customers. And I think now that we're focusing more and more on cabinet free, that's going to be a big deal. One cable automation and XTS Xplanner builds smaller machines, which saves a lot of money in floor space. So I think overall we will continue to optimize that.
The cost of pcs, like I said, they're either getting more powerful or less expensive depending on which one you choose every year. So that's always a great advantage to customers.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Kevin, how can people get a hold of you? Or find out more about Beckhoff Canada.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Best way to learn more about Beckhoff Canada is to visit Beckhoff, Ca. Our website, and it's a very good website, gives you a really good understanding of what we do, and there's a lot of technology videos and discussions there to give you a better understanding of what we do and why we do it that way. And certainly you can contact me on LinkedIn anytime as well. I'm quite active there as well.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Great. Thank you, Calvin, and thanks for coming on the podcast.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: Thank you for inviting me. It was fun.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Our sponsor for this episode is Earhart Automation Systems. Earhart builds and commissions turnkey solutions for their worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing, they understand the complex world of robotics, automated manufacturing, and project management, delivering world class custom automation on time and on budget. Contact one of their sales engineers to see what airheart can build for you. And Earhart's hard to spell. It's Ehrhardt, and their email is
[email protected] I'd like to thank and acknowledge our partner a three the association for advancing Automation. They're the leading automation trade association in the world for robotics, vision and imaging, motion control and motors, and the industrial artificial intelligence technologies. Visit automate.org to learn more. And if you'd like to get in touch with me at the robot industry podcast, you can find me Jim Barretta on LinkedIn. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening and be safe out there. Today's podcast was produced by customer Attraction Industrial marketing, and I'd like to thank our team, Chris Gray for the music, Jeffrey for audio production, my partner Janet, and our sponsor, Earhart Automation Systems.
