Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Automated Welding Systems

In the modern automotive plant, safety and standard control often need to be highly integrated. Stringent safety legislation means manufacturers are under steadily growing pressure to demonstrate that they are doing everything possible to protect personnel. An integrated approach means that manufacturers can address safety requirements and productivity goals without conflict or compromise.

Safety systems must of course stop machinery in response to events where safety of personnel is paramount. Mitsubishi’s integrated approach to machine safety enables the efficiency of automated processes to be increased while still offering the highest levels of safety to protect both operators and the machines themselves.

A portfolio of safety technologies and safety networking covers the whole spectrum of protection requirements that enable effective, integrated safety systems to be implemented simply and efficiently. They make it easy to adopt zonal approaches to safety, where an event on one aspect of the production line doesn’t necessarily have to impact on upstream or downstream production.

Incorporating open communications networks such as CC-Link allows both machine controllers and safety systems to be mixed on a single network. This provides tight coupling of safety and machine control to provide a unified approach to the automation of the whole production line. The CC-Link network architecture can also be extended to increase plant visibility, hence playing a key role in maximising machine availability on a plant-wide basis.