Product Description:

The EL3001 analog input terminal is manufactured by Beckhoff for the EL EtherCAT Terminals series. It provides one voltage measurement channel that connects to field sensors and forwards digitized data over EtherCAT. The device is intended for modular automation stations where compact DIN-rail I/O replaces centralized racks. It accepts a single-ended signal and powers its electronics through the internal E-bus, eliminating the need for an external supply and reducing field wiring. This arrangement allows controllers to monitor process variables with minimal latency without requiring dedicated analog input cards.

The terminal converts incoming voltage with a resolution of 12 bits, providing 4,096 discrete steps across the measurement span. Each conversion takes 0.625 ms, allowing the single channel to be scanned at up to 1.6 kHz without overruns. An analog third-order filter attenuates higher frequencies, while the digital stage applies a cutoff frequency of 1 kHz to suppress aliasing. The input path has an impedance of greater than 130 kΩ, minimizing its electrical load on high-resistance sensors. Current drawn from the EtherCAT backplane is limited to 130 mA, helping long terminal assemblies remain within the available E-bus current capacity.

The measurement channel accepts input voltages up to ±10 V relative to the common connection, and its insulation withstands a 30 V test potential relative to neighboring I/O. The electronics are enclosed in an IP20-rated housing intended for installation inside a control cabinet. The combined linearity and gain error remains within ±0.3% of full scale, providing predictable scaling for PLC calculations. The terminal uses simultaneous acquisition, so its two-byte status word and two-byte value word are updated together to avoid phase differences when multiple EL3001 terminals share a task. Operation uses a single-ended ground reference, and the terminal does not support distributed clock synchronization.