Welcome back to the automation podcast. My name
is Sean Tierney from Insights and Automation, and
I wanna thank you for tuning back in
this week. In this episode, I meet back
up with Michael Warren from Wheelian Electric to
learn all about their Samos
ProMotion
safety controller.
But before we get to that, I do
wanna mention that we are starting to record
episodes of the automation podcast for 2026.
So if you are a vendor or if
you have a vendor you think you should
come on the show, please let them know.
Tell them to contact me directly because we'd
love to get them on early in 2026.
And with that, I also wanna thank,
Wheeling Electric for sponsoring this episode. So not
only we could bring it to everybody
ad free, but we could also make the
video
free to all viewers as well.
So with that said, I wanna welcome Michael
back to the show. Michael,
you have a very special spot in our
company's history. You were the first in person
guest
to talk about the Samos,
controller,
and I just thought that was so fun
having you into the studio. But today, we're
gonna talk about the Samos
promotion.
And I think this is very interesting because
this adds emotion to what we talked about
before.
And,
before we go into your slides, though, for
those who didn't catch our previous episode, which
I think they should because it was so
great. But before those, before we jump into
this episode, could you just, shortly introduce yourself
to our audience, and then we'll jump into
your presentation.
Yeah. Sure, Sean. Thanks. Thanks again for having
me. And, my name is Michael Warren. I'm
with, Wheelan Electric, and I'm a business development
manager for safety products and services.
Today, we're gonna talk about the Samos ProMotion,
the variant from the Samos Pro Compact that
we have now,
that we, show that,
typically,
the Samos Pro is designed,
initially to detect,
human intervention in in work cells,
and the Samos ProMotion now is able to
detect
motor shaft speed conditions, and we'll go into
that,
in the presentation here.
And the quick introduction on the Samos Pro
Compact
Motion variation. It's a new variant, from the
family itself, and what makes it different,
it has four, fast motion inputs.
These, will take up to a 70 k
signal on the base module,
and it's applicable with initiators
or
proxies,
ultrasonic,
visual, whatnot,
type, and also, HTL encoders.
And in the background, in the software that
supports this, of course, we have a safe
motion library with six basic functions.
And the chart you see on the left
there is basic some of the basic models.
Okay. There's not too many. They come either
with
screw terminals or push in,
and or with a standard Ethernet or, Ethernet
and industrial protocols.
And then at the bottom, we'll have a
list of some of the expansion modules and
also the
safety rated encoders.
Now when we compare the standard module to
the new motion variant,
as you'll notice, it carries on
with a lot of all the functions that
the original compact had.
It covers basic safety functions.
It has muting library
for when you're using light curtains, extended security
when you're doing,
connections to the outside world.
It will display the values of Samuels plan.
Okay? And we'll talk about that, how you
can get these values to show on your
HMI.
We have multiple
communication,
protocols that we can use, whether onboard or
with additional gateways.
And we also have libraries for various industries.
We have one for the press, industry. We
have one that collects analog values, one for
the combustion industry, and, of course, with the
motion variant, we have a library for motion.
And we wanna emphasize that the Samuels ProMotion
is an all in one,
compact
controller,
meaning that there's no additional modules needed to
have this motion,
capability.
It's compact, modular, and also expandable, and we'll
go into that a little bit more.
Some of the capabilities it has, of course,
is to monitor standstill,
speed, direction, and position.
And the six motion functions that are integrated
are standstill monitoring, safe direction,
safe speed range, safe limited speed,
safe minimum speed, and, of course, safe limited
position.
These are the,
the the functional blocks that are mostly used
in the industry,
at this point.
Now, it is a modular and scalable system.
We start out with the base unit. The
base unit itself, of course, has 20 inputs,
meaning that it can take up to 10
safety devices
and eight outputs.
We have LEDs for statuses
of, diagnostics and also for errors, error messages.
The standard,
ports on board are the Ethernet port. We
have an SD card slot and a mini
USB for programming.
And as I mentioned, we had four fast
motion inputs, I 13 through I 16.
And again, we have either variation of screw
in type or push in terminal blocks.
Now as I mentioned, this is scalable
and expandable.
We can add additional,
communication protocols. We can also add a gateway
for CANopen or PROFIBUS
or EtherCAT.
Okay? We can actually add two more gateways
to this expansion if we need.
On top of that, we have I can
add additional safe IO when 20 input is
not enough. We can add additional safety IO.
We can also add additional
non safety IO.
On top of that, we have some more
variance for analog measurements. We can take either
current or voltage and RTD inputs,
as part of our input catalog
to monitor,
our conditions in our cell.
And on top of that, we also have
the base configuration
is just one base, which occupies all in
the left 45 millimeters. So again, quite capable
by itself. It has up to two additional,
communication gateways
and 12 expansion modules of any combination.
So it is, again, quite scalable depending on
your needs.
As an integrated safe motion controller,
it is a single device.
And the benefit of this is, of course,
that you occupy
less space in the cabinet.
There are some
products that actually require additional module or the
module that include that is
used for motion
is a bit larger. But this again does
not deviate from its 45 millimeter width and
how much space it occupies on a DIN
rail.
And depending on how you want to configure
the software, this can be tailor made for
pretty much any application
regarding
safety, both for, human safety, but also for
monitoring
motor shaft condition, either speed, position, or direction.
The function blocks that we talked about, SLS,
SMS,
SSR,
standstill,
SDI, and SLP,
these are all TUV certified function blocks. Basically,
an industry standard
for being compatible across the industry for any
of these types of conditions.
And the benefit of the software itself is
just intuitive programming. These are literally drag and
drop into your workspace
from the library itself. So it cuts down
on the amount of time, first time that
you have to build a program. And the
programming itself is easy as you expand the
modules. The software
accommodates
any type of application that you may need.
And it's again, it's quite intuitive and very
understandable
especially in when it comes time to trying
to do some maintenance or investigate,
the safety system.
In addition to being able to take, safe,
motion inputs,
there's an anti vibration toolbox.
This is a really good benefit to help
cut down on arbitrary signals or signals that
may interfere with the actual encoder signals going
in. And this is prevalent
and occurs a lot when you're monitoring,
shafts because of vibration, just inherent vibrations of
the motion of the shaft itself.
So you can maintain your
robustness, reliability,
and safety,
despite the vibrations.
And again, as you'll see, there's a variety
of configurations,
that
may be, set up depending on your needs.
One of the interesting things that you can
do too is to, monitor shaft breakage.
Meaning that you have now the tools available
to you to maintain,
and and confidence that your that the shaft
that you're actually using or monitoring,
is not broken.
And, again,
it's not that difficult.
You put two motion sensors, typically an encoder
on one end, encoder on another end, and
you do a comparison between the two. And,
as soon as you detect a difference in
speed between the two
sensors, now you recognize that the shaft is
not contiguous and that it's broken and you
can initiate a, a safe,
action, following that.
So it does provide higher safety, with that
redundancy with two encoders on it. And you
might find these again in presses and in
portal axles. Again, when, you're trying to monitor
and maintain
the integrity of the the shaft, under scrutiny.
The Ethernet gateways on board include PROFINET,
Ethernet,
IP, and also Modbus
as I showed you in the,
expansion
slide. We also had additional for,
profibus,
EtherCAT, and CANopen. So again, you have pretty
much coverage for all the major
communication buses that are out there and available.
Yeah.
And in fact that these three right here,
PROFINET, EthernetIP, and Modbus are resident on this,
you're saving space. Again, no additional
modules needed,
to cover those three,
particular
protocols. Well, you know, I wanna be clear
on this.
If I get the industrial protocol option, right,
the unit that has the industrial protocols,
I get all three of these?
Correct.
They're included.
Yep. It's included as part of the unit
itself, and you can see the Ethernet port,
on the front face of it. And that's
a a nice, a feature benefit to have
on the base unit. And, again, you have
these protocols, and you're only occupying 45 millimeters
of space on the DIN rail. Yeah. And
that's great. As if you're an OEM, you
or you've got a lot of different systems
that you have to work with, you may
need different protocols.
So having one model number that has all
three protocols is just,
just huge.
Yep. It it it is a really, really
good benefit. I'm glad you, mentioned that, Sean.
Okay. Now the output of this, okay, what
can we do? What can we monitor? Okay?
We have the ability to send the signal
from the compact controller, the motion controller to
an HMI,
and we can monitor things. We can monitor
like e stops. Okay? Safety devices, their condition,
whether they're active or tripped.
When we're measuring, okay, we're either measuring counts,
for example, in this example, or we're measuring
shaft speed and direction and whatnot. We can
send all these signals. So we provide status
bits, counter values, speed position, and direction,
And again, if we're monitoring analog information, things
like temperature and pressure can be, displayed on
your, HMI. So
it involves,
it's pretty easy mapping,
any of the gateways. And again, the style
of the programming is not so much programming
anymore. It's just configuring with drag and drop.
It's continuous data. So again, as it's an
active view, so, you can monitor your HMI
and
see the performance and the condition of the
setup.
It sets up quick and easy.
You don't need any sort of a signal
splitter or whatnot, and of course that just
saves you extra time, cost, and effort if
you don't, need or, to have to have
any additional sensors, to accomplish that.
Some examples, some application examples. Okay? These are
pretty popular in the machine tool metalworking business.
And again, cutters. Okay? Whether it's laser cutting,
plasma cutting, water cutting, whatnot. There's several,
features that you want to be able to
monitor to help coordinate what's going on. Okay?
Standstill monitoring. Okay? When to know when things
are, stationary. Okay? And safe limited speed and
safe direction. There may be an application where
one direction is, in a, a safe condition
and the opposite direction is a hazardous condition.
This is easily accomplished with, encoders and the
Samos MOLPRO
motion controller.
Now there's easy calibration mode with safe limited
speed.
It has the highest safety during tool change,
meaning that when you're doing a standstill monitoring,
you know that the machine is not moving.
It's robust,
against vibrations. Again, we spoke about that with
the, anti vibration toolbox in the software. And,
again, it is one consolidated system for all
safety functions.
Additional type of machine that could be a
benefit from motion control is, woodworking machines. Things
like CNCs and saws and things like that.
And, again, we're gonna reach out into the
toolbox to use various functions. Things like safe
standstill
during tool changeover,
safe standstill again for service and maintenance. Okay?
Maintaining,
the position and the direction and the speed
of devices,
that could be causing hazards for people. And,
of course, safe limited speed for calibration setup.
Quite often, these need to be run while,
someone is nearby. But again, there can be
a threshold of speed,
dialed in to make sure that the operators
are still safe. This is, both a cost
both cost effective and the compact solution. Again,
all this functionality still resides,
in the module itself.
You can have up to a PLD,
safety level. Okay?
Based using either proxy switches or encoders.
And it again, as I mentioned, it supports
other functions, meaning that it can also take
inputs from either safety mats, light curtains, e
stops, and whatnot as part of the total
safety function.
Additionally, packaging machines. Okay? Whether there are folders,
sealers, or wrappers. Okay? There are various hazards
to these machines, and they do benefit from
motion monitoring.
Again, safe standstill for maintenance,
safe limited speed during setup, and safe direction.
If there's a conveyor on there, okay, there
may be one direction where it is hazardous,
to individuals, and in another direction that is
not necessarily
hazardous. So it can be dialed in during
the recipe creation.
It just gives you that additional flexibility
depending on the option and the use of
the machine itself.
And you can also add this kind of
safety where you're doing monitoring of motor shafts,
but just adding a safety encoder,
to, preexisting
and legacy equipment.
Storage systems. And this is especially true, when
you have vertical lifts. Okay?
That things like a high base storage, channel
storage, storage retrieval machines, things like that.
It's very, very important to understand standstill, meaning
that, when these,
assemblies are at a hold position and especially,
if people are going to be nearby or
underneath anything like this, it's incredibly important to
understand when you are actually at a standstill
condition.
Safe limited speed, again, also for human interaction.
Safe limited position is safe working range. K?
It's to know when and where individuals can
be near or potentially underneath,
these moving
rack systems.
And, of course, there's configurable speeds, configurable positions,
depending on the sensors needed and the actual
application.
So this becomes a cost effective solution.
As I mentioned, this the functional blocks themselves
are TUB,
certified.
And in this situation, you would be up
to a PLD
in a safety condition using two safety encoders.
So,
most importantly, again, it is, an ideal situation,
an ideal monitoring for standstill,
especially where as a vertical lift and, there
there could be a gravitational forces at play
here.
Speaking of lift,
cranes and hoisting. Okay? Same situation. Okay? This
is suitable for cranes, platforms,
and or service lifts. Things like scissor lifts,
things like that. Okay?
Very important to be able to understand when
you're actually at standstill.
Okay? Encoders
can detect that, feed that to the Samuels
Pro, and adjust,
the application
based on whether or not it is at
standstill or not.
Additional applications, additional function blocks could also include
safe limited speed and safe limited position depending
on,
whether it's a speed or a, a work
range,
need.
Additionally, as we showed in the expansion slide
that we can also take analog load measurements.
Okay? And absolute distance information
as part of the crane movement and crane
and rotation and whatnot,
to understand
and have a a safety blanket basically in
any of the crane movements.
So it's a one stop shop where you
have protection for both, motion and also analog
functions.
AGVs.
Another, ideal situation where again,
you have to provide a safety,
blanket,
on these devices.
Again, they have to be able to identify
people,
and make adjustments in their motion. They have
to identify
fixed objects and adjust their motion.
So a
safe motion controller can use several of these
function blocks to actually accomplish that. Okay? Safe
direction, for example,
you may use those. These typically have some
sort of a scanner. These are like either
the forward looking eyes or the rear looking
eyes, and they have to be initiated depending
on which direction they're going in. A safe
direction indicator can identify that and to, elicit
the front or the rear scanner on depending
on its direction?
Okay?
Additional things like safe speed range, slowing when
it gets into a
a shared,
alleyway
or coming to an intersection, things like that.
Safe speed range, again, stopping near zones depending
on loading, unloading, and whatnot. And, of course,
safe limited position depending on the steering axles.
So it is the most compact. Again, it's
ideal, especially for AGVs where space is at
a premium. You don't have the luxury of
a large cabinet to install all these things.
They do have to be put into a
compact chassis.
The TUV
level certification
in an application like this, again, would be
PLD,
with two safety encoders.
And, again, you have industrial Ethernet integrated in
the base module for sending out information.
Additional benefit for AGVs since there could be
many, many vehicles with the same
recipe in them is how you share the
recipe, the programming.
The initial program can be done on a
laptop,
stored on SD card, and then an individual
can go out to the floor
and populate
that recipe
to each AGV
by taking the SD card, inserting it into
the Samuels ProMotion,
SD card slot,
uploading the program, and then moving on to
the next and next and next. It really
cuts down on time and also cuts down
the need to carry around additional tools or
a laptop to be able to do that.
You know what? That's a great feature. But,
you know, one thing I picked up is
that you seem to use program and recipe
interchangeably.
Is that am I correct on that?
I do. And, the program,
I can it's programming,
but the program itself is basically,
the functions that the safety system needs to
perform,
and I would interchange that, with either, a
program or, a recipe. Either one. Okay. No.
And the only reason I think about it
is because a lot of times as a
PLC person, I think of recipe as, you
know, eggs and butter and, you know, whatever
it takes. Right? And so a lot of
different PLCs have a recipe feature
that makes that easy. So I just wanted
to get clear in my own mind, and
I apologize if the audience if I'm going
off the on a on a sidebar here.
But I just wanted to make sure because
I heard you say that a couple times.
So when you say recipe or program, you're
pretty much talking about what you've created, that
that that code you've created in the developer,
which is all visual and very, very cool,
which we saw in the last episode.
And when you download that to the unit,
you may call it a recipe or a
program, but that's what's on that SD card.
And you don't have to leave the SD
card in. Is that correct? The way that
the Samos Pro operates, it likes to have
a card in it. It doesn't have to
have that particular,
program,
resident on the card, but the slot is
dependent on having a card in there. So,
again, you can
walk around,
transfer the program to each of the ADVs,
and basically just put in a placeholder. There's
actually a plug a placeholder that you can
use, in its place. And that's basically how
the controller, likes to operate.
Does now does it come with that placeholder?
Yes. It actually does come with it. Good.
Good. Yep.
So,
we spoke about the encoders, some of the
input devices that actually feed this. Okay? And,
these represent a couple of different variations
of safety encoders, s s e n n
c, safety encoders.
These are HTLs.
Okay? And they can be either two or
four tracks.
And, of course, we're watching
speed, position, and direction on these.
And all the functions with or without direction
are available.
And, also, it includes the anti vibration toolbox.
It could be very important on
machinery that generates a lot of vibration.
It is available,
the safety level up to CAT four, PLE,
and SIL three,
depending on the configuration,
whether you're using just a a b or
a a inverse, b and b inverse.
And, of course, the maximum number of axles,
axis that we can monitor is two. Okay?
Upwards of two.
Now proxies, you don't have to just use,
a safety rated encoder,
wheel ins or otherwise,
to operate this. You can use proxenses.
Okay. A prox sensors. Okay? They can be,
standard approxes. They can be ultrasound, even a
light barrier, for example. Okay? It's looking for
some sort of a timed signal,
as an input. And, of course, the max
reachable safety levels
is really dependent on whether or not in
the top two, graphics, it shows single proxies.
The bottom two show redundant dual proxies.
So in the safety world,
if you want a higher level of safety,
of course, you have to make things redundant,
and that's why,
the first two is the highest you can
have is CAT one PLC,
SIL one. That's only with one sensor. And
at the bottom, the highest you can get
is CAT three PLE or SIL two, and
that's using two sensors. And, of course, again,
we're still just monitoring the maximum of two
axis.
Okay.
And then, of course, so we covered, safety
encoders. We covered,
standard proxies,
prox type devices, and now we can also
use a standard encoder.
And I think, it pretty much is the
same
concept as a safety encoder, but I think
you'll notice that the max reachable safety level
is only CAT one, PLC,
and SIL one. This is a bit of
a derating because, again, it isn't a safety
rated,
encoder. Okay? There is a benefit,
by having a safety rated encoder as part
of your system. If your safety needs and
your PL level, your required PL level,
is a bit higher,
it can be achieved, but you would have
to get the safety rated encoders. But the
standard encoders
do and can work very well with this.
And if we have,
two axes, then it's just single ended, okay,
signal wise, or,
one axis and antivalent.
So, again, it depends on the configuration and
the kind of signals that you're feeding the
Samos Pro Compact Motion.
So in summary, the applications with the ProMotion.
Okay? These are a couple of the devices
that we show, a couple of the encoders.
Okay? One is a hollow shaft. The other
one is a solid shaft to attach to
a pre existing shaft of some sort with
a coupler.
Okay. We're monitoring speed direction and positioning. And,
again, this is always,
concurrent with, safety standards. In this case, IEC
sixty one eight hundred.
Standstill monitoring is, useful and beneficial during commissioning
or maintenance. Again, maintaining the fact that you
have zero RPMs, zero shaft movement.
Safe direction
is useful and important, especially when you have
rollers or gates or machinery,
where you have to know, again, one direction
is safe versus the other direction not being
so safe.
Safe limited speed, if you have to monitor,
and the safety integrity
of an application during setup where there is
actually motion and there's human interaction
involved,
then a safe limited speed,
is is established
to say that, okay, once it arrives at
that safe limited speed, then someone can interact
with the machinery.
And, of course, safe limited position
for any sort of rotary or linear axes
and to understand where the position is, for
example, like cranes. Okay? There could be, one
position that is considered a safe position for
the crane and another position where it's directly
over a walkway or whatnot that would be
considered unsafe, and it couldn't stop or maintain
in that position there.
And that concludes the presentation that we have
for you on the Samuels
ProMotion. Again, it's, one device only. No additional
modules needed to have this, feature and capability
resident on the unit itself.
Oh, any questions?
No. I just had a little reflection. I
mean, I'm just thinking about how,
you know, we get this device. You can
get it with the industrial protocols. You could
add two more industrial protocols,
to it, the, you know, the CAN bus
or EtherCAT or, you know, the others.
Then you can add 12 additional modules, safe
or non safe. So it it's just to
me. I mean, like, it's this flexible,
safety controller that does motion,
right, safe speed, or all all the six
that you mentioned
in addition to having all those all that
expandability.
It just brings me back to when you
were here in the office, and we filmed
that episode
on the Samos Pro Compact, I believe it
was. Yes. Exactly. And and and, you know,
I probably should throw out there too that,
you know, these guys don't just make the
safety controller. They make HMIs and all kinds
of other stuff as well as we talked
about in that,
in that video. But, you know,
Michael, was there anything else you wanted to
cover? I do want you to give you
you to spell out your for anybody who's
driving, spell out your, your website for them
so they they know how to get to
your website. But is there also anything else
you wanted to cover in today's show?
Well, let me get to the website.
It's, www.wheland-electric.com.
Okay. That's our North American,
website. We're a German company, but that's our
North American website.
Nice. Okay.
And,
to follow-up on what you mentioned,
when we had our our studio session,
The the the demo that I ran through
was a perfect example of how a,
a motion,
controller like this,
integrates nicely into a safety cell.
Look, we fed various safety,
input devices,
into that demo. Okay? We had, an e
stop on there. We had three types of
door interlocks.
We had light curtains.
We had a, a proximity sensor actually, if
you recall, where you could, like, you know,
come closer and closer and then have a
position where you say, okay. Any closer than
that is considered unsafe, and that would trip
the,
the the safety itself.
So what we've added now to that, portfolio
is,
motor shaft performance, meaning,
speed,
direction, and position. And that demo actually had
it. It doesn't really,
show itself very well, but it hidden inside
is a motor
and there's a belt. And the belt is
attached to a shaft,
encoder. And an encoder now is picking up
what's going on with that motor. It identifies
its speed, it identifies its position, and it
also identifies its direction. And depending on a
a real life application, all those devices could
be,
spread out throughout the machine, and you're trying
to capture
a,
an image of the safe condition of the
machine, whether someone is stepping on a safety
mat, or someone is, putting a hand in
somewhere,
or if the machine reaches,
an unsafe speed or an unsafe position,
You're monitoring all that with that safety controller.
And and to your point about the expandability,
your first iteration
may include, you know, four or five modules.
But as you saw in the presentation, you
have that
scalability
as your needs grow, so can this base
module system grow with you. So you can
continue to add, more and more as your
needs and as your safety needs,
continue to grow. Yeah. I can definitely see,
like, an OEM, they'll have different machines. Some
are more complicated than others.
So on some machines, they'll need more safety
IO than others. So that's a very good
point, and, just wanna thank you again, Michael,
for coming back on the show and bringing
us up to speed. I just found that
presentation so interesting as you went through all
the different,
motion safety applications
where you need them on, you know, safe
speeds and whatnot. So safe directions, you know,
so important on these, type of systems that
you went through. But in any case, really
just wanna thank you again for coming on.
Oh, I appreciate it, Sean. Thank you for
having me. Well, I hope you enjoyed that
episode, and I wanna thank Michael for coming
back on the show to bring us up
to speed on the Samos
ProMotion
Safety Controller. I learned a lot. I really
enjoyed seeing all those different applications
that the product can be used in. Very
interesting stuff and how you make those applications
safe by monitoring different things. And so I
hope you guys enjoyed this episode as well.
I also wanna thank Wheelan Electric
for sponsoring this episode so we can make
it ad free. They basically underwrote our cost
to film,
edit, and publish the episode. And by doing
so, we don't have to put any ads
in it. So we really appreciate that. Again,
if you have a favorite vendor or if
you're a vendor yourself,
we are starting to record episodes for 2026
now.
And so we'd love to get you to
contact us if you have some time. Maybe
all the shows are done. You have some
time during the holidays where you wanna sit
back and do something more relaxing, maybe stay
in the office and and do some shows
with us, please get in touch because that's
what keeps this podcast going. It's not me.
It's you, the vendors, and you, the audience,
who ask your vendors to contact me to
come on the show. Because without the vendors,
what are we talking about? Right? That's what
the show is all about. You know, learning
about new products and technologies,
and who better to tell us about them
than the actual people either creating the products
or using the products or, you know, the
product specialist. So with that said, everybody, I
wanna wish you all good health and happiness.
And until next time, my friends,
peace.