Relays with forcibly guided contacts provide highly reliable protection for safety circuits

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Millions of relays with forcibly guided contacts protect the well-being and lives of people and machines worldwide every day. The reliable mechanical forced guidance according to DIN EN 61810-3 / IEC 61810-3 is a significant difference to conventional power relays.

Relays with forcibly guided contacts feature mechanically linked contacts that detect faults and can thus prevent accidents in safety applications. If, for example, contacts of relays wear out and weld, this can have fatal consequences. Therefore, faults in safety-related switching must be detected and reported to ensure reliable personal as well as machine protection. Relays with forcibly guided contacts provide a verifiable disconnection function in these cases and prevent fault scenarios.

Panasonic Industry provides several different relays with forcibly guided contacts for use in numerous different applications:

The 1a1b SF-M series relay with forcibly guided contacts benefits from a very flat design, reflow soldering capability and the latest safety relay technology. Ensuring the safe operation of machinery and other automation, building or transportation equipment outside the train. SF-M series relays feature a super flat housing with a height of only 7.8mm. This makes it possible to miniaturize all kinds of safety modules by keeping the ability to switch high loads on both contacts. The power contacts can switch 6A on the NO and 4A on the NC side. The silver alloy contacts can handle low level loads down to 10 V 1 mA. This is important not only in a lot of railway signaling applications, but more and more also in the industrial field. A very high shock and vibration resistance of ≥20 g, low coil holding power of 100 mW, an ambient temperature of -40 up to +85 °C and reinforced insulation of ≥ 5.5 mm (V=230 V overvoltage category III, 6KV) on NO side are further technical details of SF-M safety relays from Panasonic Industry. Furthermore, the relays come packaged in tape & reel format.

SF-Y series relays with a force-guided contact structure benefit from very small dimensions and are available with four or six poles (4-pole: (L x W x H) 31mm x 28.6mm x 14.5mm; 6-pole: (L x W x H) 39mm x 28.6mm x 14.5mm). A very low holding power helps to reduce power consumption and self-heating, which enables a further size reduction of the respective application, e.g. in industrial & building automation. SF-Y series relays offer best in class shock and vibration resistance, high ambient temperature and a sealed construction (RTIII). The components are ideally suited for applications like emergency stop switches, machine safety engineering, safety control units, automation technology, elevators, escalators and overcurrent protection with monitor contact.

The SF-S relay family with forcibly guided contacts fulfils many wishes of PC board design engineers: At just 13mm in width and 24mm in height, the relay boasts a nominal switching current of 6A at 230VAC/30VDC. Thanks to its polarised drive system, the coil dissipation power is very low. For the 4 pin version, which is only 40mm in length and available with contact arrangements of 2a2b and 3a1b, the coil dissipation power is a mere 360mW. The 55mm long, 6-pin version's coil dissipation power is just 500mW. It is available with contact arrangements of 4a2b, 5a1b and 3a3b. Each type offers an optional, integrated status LED. An impressive, typical turn-on time of only 8ms and highly functional shock resistance of at least 20g round off the technical parameters. PC board and DIN-rail terminal sockets are available as accessories for all SF-S relays.

  SF-Y SF-S SF-M
Contact configuration 8A
4-pole version:
2a2b
3a1b
8A
6-pole version:
4a2b
5a1b
6A
4-pole version:
2a2b
3a1b
6A
6-pole version:
4a2b
5a1b
3a3b
6A
1a1b
Max. switching voltage 250V AC, 30V DC 250 V AC, 125 V DC 250V AC, 125V DC
Nominal operating power 670mW 4-pole: Approx. 360mW
6-pole: Approx. 500mW
270mW (when inpot)
100mW (when retained)
Special features Tested as sealed device according to EN 60079-15:2010 clause 22.5 (VDE) Sockets available,
LED type available
reflow soldering
Length x
width x
height (mm)
31 x 28.6 x 14.5 39 x 28.6 x 14.5 40 x 13 x 24 50 x 13 x 24 33 x 14 x 7.8
 
Standards and approvals • EN61810-3, Type A
• TÜV / UL
• EN61810-3, Type A
• TÜV / UL/C-UL / CQC
• VDE EN 60947-5-1 available
• EN61810-3. Type A
• TÜV / UL/C-UL

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