Bench Talk

New Tech Tuesdays

Join Mouser's Technical Content team for a weekly look at all things interesting, new, and noteworthy for design engineers.

Modern industrial environments demand unwavering reliability to protect personnel, machinery, and equipment from dangerous malfunctions. As control cabinets become more densely packed, engineers must implement robust safety mechanisms without consuming excessive space. In the face of this constraint, force-guided relays emerge as an essential component in these safety-critical systems, ensuring that contacts operate in a predictable, mutually exclusive manner.

This week’s New Tech Tuesdays explores the space challenges of modern safety systems and how compact, force-guided relay technologies simplify integration while maintaining rigorous safety standards.

Overcoming Space Constraints with a Force-Guided Relay

Traditional safety relays often require significant DIN rail real estate, forcing engineers to specify larger, more expensive control cabinets. This bulkiness complicates retrofitting efforts in existing setups where space remains limited. Furthermore, complex wiring requirements increase assembly time and elevate the risk of connection errors during installation. Industry standards dictate that force-guided contacts must physically prevent normally open and normally closed contacts from closing simultaneously.^[1]

To address these bottlenecks, contemporary relay designs incorporate tool-free wiring solutions. Push-in connection technology allows technicians to quickly and reliably secure solid conductors and stranded wires. These modern connection methods can reduce wiring time and operator strain, with push-in designs requiring 50 percent lower insertion force and enabling faster termination compared with conventional alternatives.^[2] Additionally, advanced relay architectures feature integrated potential distribution systems that allow engineers to seamlessly share input voltages across multiple modules.

The Newest Products for Your Newest Designs^®

The RIFLINE complete industrial relay modules from Phoenix Contact deliver a highly compact, robust solution for safety-critical applications. Across the broader family, engineers benefit from quick and easy cabling and integrated push-in connection technology. These modules facilitate simple terminal A2 potential distribution on the input side via plug-in bridges. By ensuring reliable application feedback, the RIFLINE series simplifies assembly and enhances overall performance for modern industrial safety systems.

Expanding upon these foundational benefits, the Phoenix Contact RIF-RPT series modules provide the high contact count required for modern machinery while significantly reducing the control cabinet footprint. This module, measuring just 21mm wide, switches reliably using four force-guided contacts within a single space-saving profile. To accommodate different system architectures, the module is available in configurations with two normally open contacts and two normally closed contacts, or three normally open contacts and one normally closed contact.

Tuesday’s Takeaway

As industrial setups grow increasingly dense, engineers must balance spatial limitations with uncompromising safety mandates. By shifting to modules that feature push-in connections and integrated potential distribution, engineers save valuable cabinet space and reduce assembly time. Ultimately, these advancements provide a more compact and wiring-efficient way to implement monitored relay functions in safety-related industrial control systems.

Sources

[1] https://webstore.iec.ch/en/publication/21885
[2] https://www.phoenixcontact.com/en-us/us-lp-ptterminalblocks