Parker Hannifin Corporation Launches New XT – Parker Xpress™ PowerStation

The XT was designed with the Industrial user in mind. The XT is a fully solid state device with impressive 15G peak shock and 5-500 Hz vibration ratings. Its fanless design prevents unexpected machine downtime due to fan failure—the most common failure mode of HMI products.

August 30, 2016, Rohnert Park, CA - Parkers Electromechanical and Drives Division North America is pleased to announce the release of the XT - Parkers Xpress™ PowerStation. The XT comes pre-loaded with the next iteration of Parkers award winning runtime and development software, Xpress 4.1.


The XT was designed with the Industrial user in mind. The XT is a fully solid state device with impressive 15G peak shock and 5-500 Hz vibration ratings. Its fanless design prevents unexpected machine downtime due to fan failure—the most common failure mode of HMI products. In addition, the XTs ventless design prevents dust build up, metal filing, and other contaminants from damaging the motherboard. Every detail of the XT was seen as an opportunity by the engineering team to provide long-lasting and reliable operation; yet the XTs minimal bezel and cabinet depths provide a modern and attractive look and feel often missing from industrial devices.

Loaded with Xpress 4.1 runtime, the XT goes far beyond a traditional HMI. The 1.83 GHz quad core processor and 4GB DDR3L RAM supports a rich, graphical programming environment that anyone can use right out of the box. With drag-and-drop programming and intuitive, pre-made tools, the time to develop HMI applications is reduced by 30% over competitors. Unlimited tags and screens, real-time trending, and historical alarm tools doesnt even scratch the surface of Xpresss capabilities. The true power of Xpress is in how it leverages web publishing to provide an incremental solution to the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things).

Xpress enables remote viewing, controlling, and editing of the HMI all from a browser. This is one of the reasons why the XT comes with two LAN ports—one for an industrial network and the other on the company network to allow remote access. The remote capability can be extended to any Android and iOS device by downloading our free app, Parker Remote Manager (RemoteMgr). The major benefit of remote access is that it allows users to send information to the people who need it most, whether that is a factory floor manager monitoring OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) or a purchasing department monitoring the amount of material used.

Parker has developed tools within Xpress that make implementing these remote capabilities easy enough for any OEM to provide without getting IT involved. A template is provided with six pre-developed levels of security, so designers can quickly develop user profiles that limit access from specific screens down to the read/write access of specific tools. This ensures the correct level of access for the appropriate audience. For instance, you wouldnt want the CEO of a company to have the ability to turn on/off a machine process, but you certainly would like them to view the overall factory metrics. In addition, this allows the OEM to provide easy remote support and publish upgrades to applications at any global location where the XT is on a network.

As the factory floor becomes increasingly connected, XT provides a vast library of drivers for the most common PLC and industrial devices. The XT is ready to communicate either to downstream machine-level or to higher-level SCADA systems. Pairing this unique communication capability with its dual-LAN, multiple USB, and a configurable RS232/422/485 ports, the XT even acts as a protocol converter. With unlimited tags youll be able to connect to as many devices as you want without limitation, making it a no-brainer in existing factory installations.

The XT completes Parkers next-generation HMI family, a family that includes the PCA (Parker Industrial PC PowerStation), and the IX (Parkers InteractX PowerStation), a supervisory HMI. InteractX is also capable of screen/tag sharing with Xpress, reducing development time up to 80% when compared with traditional SCADA packages. Not only does this family provide the same form factor and consistent look and feel, but together they also provide Parkers Information Anywhere solution.

According to Marissa Tucker, Product Marketing Manager of Controls and HMIs for Parker, the XTs remote capabilities, paired with the IXs database capabilities, are part of a larger system that creates a solution that gets operationally critical data to the right person wherever they are located and on whatever device they choose to use.

"The IX running InteractX is a critical component in Parkers Information Anywhere solution," says Tucker. "The IX acts as a data aggregator that collects machine-level data using its vast library of communication drivers and database tool sets. By collecting all this information in a single database, users can begin to see relationships such as bad yields created by specific operator behaviors, perform OEE—Overall Equipment Effectiveness—calculations and reports, or even build predictive machine maintenance algorithms. But information isnt useful unless it gets to the people who can act on it. When the IX is used in conjunction with the XT machine-level and web publishing HMIs, the data can be published to remote PCs, Android and iOS devices using our free Remote Manager application. This solution is not only powerful, but weve made it easy for any OEM machine builder to develop, creating added value for them and their customers."

The XT, IX, and PCA provide industrial ratings and an attractive solution to OEM machine builders who desire a solution that reduces maintenance and downtime for themselves and the customers they serve. Overall the XT provides one of the most impressive, easy-to-use web-publishing HMI solutions available. When paired with the IX InteractX PowerStation, it becomes a powerful Information Anywhere solution.

About Parker Hannifin
With annual sales of approximately $13 billion in fiscal year 2015, Parker Hannifin is the world's leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies and systems, providing precision-engineered solutions for a wide variety of mobile, industrial, and aerospace markets. The company has operations in 50 countries around the world. Parker has increased its annual dividends paid to shareholders for 59 consecutive fiscal years, among the top five longest-running dividend-increase records in the S&P 500 index. For more information, visit the company's website at www.parker.com, or its investor information website at www.phstock.com.

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