Application Scenarios
A 12-year-old high-speed cam slicer line in a European snack-food plant was built on B&R SYSTEM 2005—CP260 rack, IF260 carriers, the whole vintage stack. The OEM had originally specced the line with a pure RS232 link to the HMI panel and a separate Ethernet gateway box for recipe downloads from the plant MES. The gateway died three shifts into a holiday-weekend rush, and the spare had been discontinued. The integrator’s quick fix was to pop a 3IF681.96.B.R into an empty IF260 slot on the CP260: RS232 landed on the HMI (kept the original cable), Ethernet landed on the plant LAN (new CAT5e drop), and the INA2000 station number was dialed in via the two BCD rotary switches on the module face—no software re-flash, no rack power-down beyond a controlled 5 V cycle. The slicer was back online in 22 minutes, and the plant subsequently standardized the 3IF681.96.B.R on all five B&R 2005 lines as a “dual-interface insurance” card. For the lead electrician, the takeaway was pragmatic: “It’s not a fancy module, but when your 2005 rack needs both a serial port and an Ethernet port and you’ve only got one slot left, there isn’t anything else that fits.”
h2 Parameter
| Main Parameters | Value/Description |
|---|---|
| Product Model | 3IF681.96.B.R (3IF681.96 variant) |
| Manufacturer | B&R Automation (ABB Group) |
| Product Category | SYSTEM 2005 Interface Module (Communication) |
| Carrier Compatibility | CP260 communication processor, IF260 interface module carrier |
| IF1 – RS232 | DSUB-9 male, ST16C650 UART, 32-byte TX/RX FIFO, up to 115.2 kbaud, 15 m @ 19200, handshake DTR/DSR/RTS/CTS |
| IF2 – Ethernet | 10BASE-T RJ45, AM79C960 controller, 128 KB send/receive buffer, 10 Mbit/s, galvanically isolated |
| Station Addressing | Two BCD rotary switches for INA2000 station number |
| Power Consumption | 5 V DC from backplane, max ~1.65–2.4 W |
| Isolation | Ethernet side isolated; RS232 side not isolated (input filter/protection circuit present) |
| Status Indicators | RXD/TXD LEDs for RS232; Ethernet link/activity via carrier LEDs |
| Certifications | CE, cULus (E115267) |
| Operating Temp. | 0 °C to +55 °C (standard B&R 2005 cabinet rating) |
| Mounting | Slot-in to CP260 / IF260, DIN-rail cabinet environment |
h2 Technical Principles and Innovative Values
- Innovation Point 1: Dual-Protocol Consolidation in a Single 2005 Slot: The SYSTEM 2005 rack is width-constrained—most slots host either a bus controller, a fieldbus card, or a serial link, not all three. The 3IF681.96.B.R packs a full RS232 UART (with 32-byte FIFO to offload the 2005 CPU from character-level interrupt handling) and a 10BASE-T MAC with 128 KB buffer into one module. That means a CP260 rack that previously needed “serial card + Ethernet gateway box” outside the rack can collapse both into one slot—freeing carrier slots and removing a point-to-point external cable that used to be a failure mode.
- Innovation Point 2: Hardware-Station Addressing via BCD Rotary Switches: Instead of burying the INA2000 node ID in a software parameter file that lives on a 15-year-old laptop with a dead Parallel port, the 3IF681.96.B.R puts two BCD rotaries right on the faceplate. Dial the tens and units, reseat the module, done. In retrofit jobs where the original B&R project file is lost and nobody wants to reverse-engineer the Automation Studio HW config, this hardware fallback is what gets the line talking to the MES again.
- Innovation Point 3: Era-Appropriate Isolation Strategy: The Ethernet side carries galvanic isolation (unusual for early-2000s 10BASE-T peripherals in the 2005 family), protecting the 5 V backplane from plant-LAN surges. The side deliberately isn’t isolated—because in B&R’s design intent, the faces a local HMI or PC within the same cabinet, where isolation would just add capacitance and kill the 115.2 kbaud distance. The split-isolation philosophy shows the 3IF681.96.B.R was purpose-designed, not a generic UART-plus-MAC glue job.
h2 Application Cases and Industry Value
A woodworking plant running three B&R 2005-controlled panel-sizing saws faced a classic legacy dilemma: the OEM HMI panels (connected via to the CP260) were being retired, and the replacement HMI only spoke Ethernet. Rather than rip and replace all three 2005 racks (quote came back at ~€18 k per line for →X20 migration plus rewiring), the plant engineer slotted a 3IF681.96.B.R into each ‘s spare IF260 carrier. The original stayed connected to a small local touch-panel for floor-level jog/recipe (kept for the operators who liked the old UI), and the Ethernet side landed on the new plant network where the replacement HMI’s VNC client pulled the screen. Total parts cost: three modules + three patch cables. Six months post-retrofit, the plant reported zero communication-related downtime on the saw lines, and the “spare IF681” pool became the most-requested item in the electrician’s crib. “Cheapest migration we ever did,” the plant manager noted, “and the saws didn’t miss a beat.”
Beyond woodworking and packaging, the 3IF681.96.B.R routinely appears in printing press controls, textile machines, and injection-molding cells where B&R 2005 rack density is high and the “add one serial + one Ethernet” request comes up every time a line gets a partial MES uplift.
h2 Related Product Combination Solutions
The 3IF681.96.B.R lives inside a SYSTEM 2005 communication rack and is never solitary. Typical companions from the same ecosystem:
- – B&R 2005 Communication Processor rack that hosts the IF260 carrier and supplies the 5 V backplane the 3IF681.96.B.R draws from; most spares orders bundle at least one per 4–6 interface modules.
- – Interface module carrier that the 3IF681.96.B.R physically seats into; if your ‘s is damaged (bent pins, corroded backplane), the carrier often needs swapping too.
- 3IF671.96 – Sister module in the 3IF family, typically a Profibus DP master/slave interface for 2005; plants running mixed Profibus + Ethernet often pair the 3IF681.96.B.R with a 3IF671 in adjacent slots.
- 3IF780.96 – CAN bus interface module in the same 2005 form factor; common on B&R 2005 machines with CANopen servo drives (ACOPOS classic) that also need an Ethernet uplink via the 3IF681.96.B.R.
- 7CP260.xx – variants with different slot counts; when building a spare-kit, match the variant to your existing rack depth.
- X20IF1xxx (e.g., X20IF1063-1) – The X20-generation successor Ethernet/ interface; for plants planning a full 2005→X20 migration, the 3IF681.96.B.R is the “hold-the-line” spare while the X20 conversion is phased cell-by-cell.