SERCOS Interoperability Demo to be exhibited at SPS/IPC/DRIVES 2006 The SERCOS interface trade associations will exhibit a SERCOS interoperability demo at SPS/IPC/DRIVES show, Nuremberg (Germany). The exhibit, demonstrating interoperability of SERCOS II and SERCOS III products from multiple vendors, will be on the joint booth of SERCOS International in Hall 6, Stand 110. The demo features a new SERCOS III controller and servodrives from AMK and another new controller from Bosch Rexroth running new Bosch Rexroth SERCOS III servodrives. This portion of the demo showcases new SERCOS III products that utilize Industrial Ethernet as their hardware platform. It highlights the new SERCOS Controller-to-Controller (C2C) profile, which interconnects and synchronizes the two controllers. The C2C profile allows cross communication and synchronization of controls and even individual servodrives in different parts of a machine or packaging line, and meets the cell bus requirements of the OMAC Packaging Workgroup. The controller-to-controller profile takes into consideration innovative SERCOS III features, such as hardware redundancy, hot-plugging and cross communication. In addition, a third SERCOS III controller from Bosch Rexroth runs SERCOS II drives (using fiber optics) from AMK, Baumueller, Lust Antriebstechnik, Rockwell Automation and Yaskawa. The controllers and drives all conform to the SERCOS interface Pack Profile, a subset of the SERCOS interface functions defined specifically for multi-vendor interoperability of servo controls and drives for packaging machinery. This controller also incorporates the C2C profile to communicate with the other two controllers in the system. The demo illustrates the benefits to the packaging machine builder and end user of utilizing the SERCOS interface international standards, plus OMAC guidelines for interoperability such as controller-to-controller communication, the Pack Profile and the PackML™ state model with PackTags that standardizes machine states, modes, commands and data. The demo also illustrates a migration concept for SERCOS II devices and Pack Profile to the new SERCOS III, based on Industrial Ethernet.