02 “Sweet cake” in the eyes of foreign and domestic investors

In the Chinese automation market, especially in the general AC servo product line, bus communication has become a prominent learning. Each servo manufacturer has introduced its own dedicated bus protocol (Yaskawa Electric Mechatrolink, Panasonic RTEX, Mitsubishi CC-Link, etc.). This bus trend was started by European and American manufacturers, and carried forward by Japanese manufacturers, and in the application of EtherCAT bus communication, foreign capital and domestic capital seem to have historically reached a tacit understanding.

Beckhoff is the representative of European and American manufacturers, whose PC-based motion controller products occupy the first market share in China, and the corresponding choice of communication protocol should be based on EtherCAT, and Beckford has been engaged in EtherCAT communication protocol promotion activities in China, under the strong promotion of Beckford, EtherCAT is also accepted by most PC-based motion controller manufacturers in China.

Perhaps in a competitive spirit with fellow German Beckford, the electrical giant Siemens has itself launched an industrial Ethernet-based fieldbus system called Profinet. The difference between Profinet and EtherCAT is that EtherCAT was originally developed by Beckford, and then a consortium was formed across Europe to use the technology. After the technology is introduced, the market is controlled by the underlying chip and the licensing of the underlying chip, and then the EtherCAT ecosystem is made, so the entire EtherCAT system is richer. Profinet is the ecosystem established by Siemens itself, although Siemens has been trying its best to promote its own Profinet, want to “out of the circle”, but the relationship between the two is a bit like the Android system and Apple system in the smart phone industry.

Japanese manufacturer Omron began to promote EtherCAT bus servo in 2012, mainly in the high-end market such as lithium battery, packaging (traditional pulse servo for high-precision positioning control can not meet, low-end market does not need as high performance as bus servo). Especially in the lithium industry, Omron’s presence is particularly strong, and its PLC products are far ahead in the share of the lithium industry in 2021. In general, for the sake of uniformity and compatibility on a lithium production line, the bus EtherCAT protocol will be preferred. At present, most of the motion control PLC products of domestic servo manufacturers also choose EtherCAT as the main choice of their bus protocol.

In the future, lithium battery equipment will develop in the direction of multi-process all-in-one machines and multi-station equipment, the number of servo shafts equipped with equipment will also increase synchronously, and the bus servo products will be the general trend, which further leads to the bus servo market share of the lithium battery equipment industry will be further expanded. At the same time, with the development of domestic servo applications, EtherCAT protocol servo products will also be further developed.

Panasonic, another Japanese player, also believes that bus communication is the development trend of servo products, and the market share will be more and more. As an old factory, Panasonic also has its own dedicated bus protocol RTEX.

Although their own RTEX is also very fragrant, but EtherCAT communication speed, convenient wiring, no interference and other characteristics, will make the processing efficiency of the equipment faster, but also improve the profit of the equipment, so the customer acceptance is very high. Generally, customers require EtherCAT communication mode servo, with Beckhoff IPC+ soft PLC, or Omron PLC to match the use. Even if the price of Panasonic EtherCAT bus servo will be 8-10% more expensive than traditional servo in 2019, this future direction has not changed.

In the past few years, Yaskawa motor relative to other Japanese manufacturers, the heart is more tangled, on the one hand to recognize the development of bus communication, MetroLink-III is a motion control fieldbus protocol based on EtherCAT physical layer developed by Yaskawa in 2007. MetroLink-4 has been developed and will be applied to SigMA-10 in the future); On the other hand, because many upper control in lithium, electronics and other industries use EtherCAT protocol, so that Yaskawa Motor in these areas to support EtherCAT bus products more, and thanks to lithium, electronics and other market demand to increase, in 2021 Yaskawa Motor EtherCAT bus product sales have increased slightly.

In fact, this tangled mentality is affected by Yaskawa Electric’s own sales strategy (push their own bus protocol), resulting in EtherCAT products in general. Like a few years ago, Yaskawa Electric mainly promoted M2 and M3 buses in China without applying EtherCAT protocol, while many domestic CNC systems and servo motor manufacturers had installed Yaskawa electric M2 and M3 bus products.

Among domestic manufacturers, there are also more applications of EtherCAT in Huichuan servo products, especially in the lithium battery industry, the proportion of EtherCAT applications accounts for the absolute amount. In addition to the lithium industry itself to EtherCAT as the mainstream communication protocol, it is also related to Huichuan in the lithium industry to Omron as the main benchmark competitor. In the industry, Huichuan Servo supporting Omron PLC (Omron’s motion control PLC uses EtherCAT as its communication protocol) scheme, this scheme has been built as a typical benchmark in the industry, which directly determines the communication protocol selection of servo.

Another domestic manufacturer Hecawa bus communication protocol is also based on EtherCAT, in the robot industry will also use part of the CANopen bus protocol,X6 and Y7 will involve Siemens Profinet or Yaskawa Electric Mechatrolink communication protocol.

From the perspective of servo product development, the main servo series of X3E mainly uses Ethercat as its communication protocol. In addition, the original communication protocol plan for the newly developed X6 and Y7 products was that X6 featured EtherCAT supporting Profinet high-performance products, and Y7 featured EtherCAT supporting Mechatrolink protocol products. However, because X6 is affected by the general lack of core in the entire industry, production and supply have caused certain difficulties, so Hechuan stepped up the research and development test of Y7 product EtherCAT communication mode, and began mass sales in April 2022.

In the future, with the applicability of EtherCAT bus becoming more and more widespread, the sales proportion of EtherCAT bus products will gradually increase, and Hechuan will also strengthen the promotion of EtherCAT bus.

* Some manufacturers such as Leisai, Guangzhou CNC, Advantech and other manufacturers use EtherCAT communication protocol motion controller products are also more, such as Leisai, Advantech PC-based products, Guangzhou CNC dedicated controller products. Due to limited space, this article will not be discussed in detail.