Newsletter 3/2013. Managing Director s greetings. Epec Oy P.O.Box 194 FIN Seinäjoki Finland COMMITMENT TO YOUR CONTINUOUS SUCCESS

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1 Newsletter 3/2013 Managing Director s greetings Time flies! We just had our 30 year anniversary and now 5 years have past very quickly. It seems that world economic trends are also changing much quicker than in the past. During these last 5 years we had deep collapse in the market in 2009, nice growth during and now we have a challenging time in the world economy again, especially in Europe. These major trends in the world market have a huge influence, especially on companies who work in international markets like Epec and our customers. We need to be ready and react faster to quick changes in the market. It seems that the times of stable, long term growth in the market have gone. Epec as a company cannot have a large influence on the changes in the world economy. But we can influence a lot how we develop and do things inside the company and operate with our customers. Even if the world economic situation is changing quicker than before, Epec is aiming for sustainable, long term growth. Everything we do is based on long term solutions. Our strategy is to concentrate on control system solutions for tough conditions. This we have been doing already for 35 years and this is what we are going to do in the future as well. We are happy to announce that large investments in R&D are achieving results now. You can find many new interesting products in this newsletter which will be released now, and more are coming at the end of the year. At the beginning of June we had our 2nd International Sales Meeting with our partners. The meeting was excellent. We shared a lot of information about what kind of solutions and applications have been made for different machines with Epec products. We also collected information from different markets on future development needs. We want to increase this kind of co-operation with our customers in the future. This is the way that we can best fulfill our Mission: Commitment to Your Continuous Success. Summer vacation season has just started in Finland. It is time to charge the batteries and then come back to work full of energy and new ideas. On behalf of myself and Epec I wish a great summer to all our customers and co-operation partners. Epec sales, production and customer support is also at your service during the summer period but there can be small delays due to the vacation season. Thank you for your patience. Best regards, Jouni Matikainen Epec Oy P.O.Box 194 FIN Seinäjoki Finland

2 Product release news: Epec 3606 Control Unit Epec 3000 Series Control Units NOW AVAILABLE Epec 3724 Control Unit The New Epec 3606 is a compact Control unit to be used as a stand-alone controller for smaller systems or as part of a bigger, decentralized control system. In the 3606 there are 21 I/O pins in total. The Epec 3606 Control Unit has the same, new awardwinning Epec design already introduced with the Epec 5050 control unit. The stylish, unique shape of the casing works to protect the electronics inside against mechanical wear. The robust, leak-proof zinc/plastic housing has also been widely tested against different environmental conditions. The 3606 Control Unit contains plenty of new features such as signal LED for control unit diagnostics. One CAN is equipped with double pins, which makes cabling easier since there is no need for branches in the wire harness. A second CAN is also available as an optional extra. Technical features: 16/32 bit powerful microcontroller Flash memory: 1.6 Mbyte RAM memory for application variables 112 kbyte PLCopen application size up to 768 kbyte Temperature range up to +85 C Non-volatile memory: 2 kbyte Application software selectable features: Analog measurement 0-5 V or 0-22 ma product order code e30b Delivery starts on September 1st 2013 The new Epec 3724 Control Unit provides the benefits of the efficient 16/32-bit microcontroller and I/O interface that have proven themselves in several applications over the years. This makes the product a real multipurpose controller for distributed control systems. The 3724 Control Unit has an optimized number of both input and output pins to be used for numerous functions in the control system. The total number of I/O pins is 52, including digital inputs and outputs, analog inputs, pulse inputs, proportional (PWM) outputs, and current feedback inputs. Epec control system products are designed and manufactured according to the strict standards of the mobile machinery industry. Technical features: 16/32 bit powerful microcontroller Flash memory: 1.6 Mbyte RAM memory: 1024 kbyte Non-volatile memory: 8 kbyte PLCopen application size up to 768 kbyte Temperature range up to +85 C Application software selectable features: Analog measurement 0-5 V or 0-22 ma Multipurpose pins product order code e30b Delivery starts on September 1st 2013

3 Product release news: Epec 5050 Control Unit a powerful central control unit for the whole machine The Epec 5050 Control Unit is a real multipurpose controller for both centralized and decentralized control systems. The Epec 5050 Control Unit has space for a 1 or 3 Mbyte PLCopen application, which features one of the biggest application size/memory combinations available on the market. The unit has four CAN buses, software configurable I/O, plenty of calculation power and can tolerate an extremely high CAN bus load. Updates to Epec 5050 Control Unit firmware Optimized diagnostic system Improved bus diagnostic by adding implementation for function block CanApiBusLoad Optimized TIME function Added high resolution timer function Open circuit diagnostic is added for each PWFM pin which supports current measurement Added filtering to current measurement Pwm maximum frequency for current controller mode is increased to 500 Hz Reset function for pulse inputs: This function can be used to reset pulse count to desired reset value. Cable detection can be used to define CANopen node-id for PLCopen application based on the state of the input pins Improved functionality when there is no application in the unit Today Agrifac Machinery B.V. uses the 3 Mbyte PLCopen application version of the Epec 5050 Control Unit as a main controller in their self-propelled sprayer Condor. The control system also consists of several Epec 2020 Control Units. Epec Oy P.O.Box 194 FIN Seinäjoki Finland

4 Product release news: EpecSDK 1.4 is now available on the Epec Extranet Epec offers tools and an extensive set of application libraries for system engineering. All Epec tools and libraries are now available as an Epec Software Development Kit (EpecSDK). EpecSDK installs the updated MultiTool, libraries and CODESYS targets. EpecSDK includes the following: MultiTool 3.1 Support for the new 3606 and 3724 control units Slave configuration New and updated PLCopen libraries Hardware specific libraries for 3606 and 3724 units New library: AI pin protection library for 4G and 3000 series New versions of libraries ProportionalValveControl and J1939 New CODESYS 2.3 targets for Codesys target for 5050 v1.2.0 Target ID MB Codesys target for 3724 v1.2.1 Target ID Codesys target for 3606 v1.2.1 Target ID Updated targets Codesys target for 5050 v1.1.0 Target ID MB Codesys target for EPEC 4G IO c167x v2.300 Target ID Codesys target for 2040 v2.700 Target ID Please visit Epec Extranet Downloads > EPEC_SDK > SDK_1_4 Epec Oy P.O.Box 194 FIN Seinäjoki Finland

5 Epec 2nd International Sales Meeting 2013 Epec s International Sales Meeting for partners was held in sunny Seinäjoki from the 4th to the 7th of June The first two days were dedicated to Epec and partner presentations. The last two days were reserved for product and software training. It was our pleasure to have participants from almost all of our partner companies. Epec s 35 years of experience was introduced through a strong and flexible organization which allows us to give excellent support to our partners and customers. Robust and multifunctional Epec products were introduced as well as software tools and libraries. A glance into the future was given through presentations, the roadmap and group work. Our partners did a great job in preparing their presentations about their companies. The presentations provided us with a lot of information about different applications made with Epec products around the world. After all the presentations, I believe that we can all agree with Epec s slogan Extreme conditions? Bring it on!. Bram Engineers B.V. - Epec Oy Partner of the Year 2012 As mentioned earlier, the weather didn t bring us extreme conditions, but the evening activities provided challenges for everyone. Smiling faces were seen throughout the week and to top off the celebration, an award for the Epec Oy Partner of the Year 2012 was presented. This time the award went to Bram Engineers B.V. in the Netherlands. Congratulations Peter and Rene! It was a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you all for participating and making this event as successful as it was. I hope that Epec Sales Meetings for Partners will become a tradition so we can see you all together again in the future. Wishing a great summer to all Epec Newsletter readers! Best Regards, Ari

6 Epec customer satisfaction survey 2013 Epec s annual customer satisfaction survey included all of Epec s main customers around the world. We received a lot of valuable feedback, which helps us to improve our products and services. Many thanks to all those who took part in the survey! From among the respondents we raffled an Apple ipad. The lucky winner came this year from Finland but wishes to stay anonymous. Congratulations to the winner! New Epec website and company video released Please visit our new website! The different kind of extreme conditions that challenge our customer machines every day inspire us and are also the basis of the design process of our products. We wanted to also bring that feeling to our marketing so we created a new website as well as a new company video exhibiting e.g. Epec customer applications and partner interviews. We are now very happy to invite you to visit us at our new webpage ( The video was created by Mediastudio CS, and we like it very much! We hope you do too! The video is available on youtube: