Heidenhain Announces EnDat 3 Encoder Interface
Heidenhain announces EnDat 3, a new version of its popular absolute position encoder interface. The new EnDat 3 interface has all the benefits of previous versions, but is even faster and more robust, with simplified functional safety features.
EnDat 3 uses a 200 kHz clock frequency, compared to the 16 kHz of previous versions, and has doubled its supported bandwidth, from 12.5 to a 25 Mb/s. This means that data can be transferred much more quickly.
Heidenhain has simplified functional safety aspects of the interface, and EnDat 3 now leverages the industry standard for functional safety: black channel. This makes implementation much easier for OEMs.
Milton Willis, machine tool product specialist at Heidenhain, said: “We’ve listened to feedback from machine tool manufacturers and their end users, as well as OEMs, and have responded by making EnDat 3 faster, more robust, and more fully-featured than any competitive product.”
The EnDat 3 interface detects its absolute position, rather than just its position relative to a reference. This is a big advantage when a machine starts up, as it does not require any machine movement to establish its position – which can be extremely time-consuming for large machines. EnDat 3, therefore, enables faster startup, which means more throughput.
The new encoder interface has reduced cabling requirements compared to the previous version, going down to a two or four-wire setup as opposed to the eight wires previously needed. This reduces cabling requirements and hence cost, which is a significant benefit in the machine tool and robotics sector. For robotics applications, the EnDat 3 also offers bus operation, which allows manufacturers to daisy-chain encoders together, to reduce cabling and therefore reduce costs, as well as to simplify design and manufacturing.
