IC693MDL940M New Original IC693MDL940M GE Output Module

Product Description

GE Fanuc IC693MDL940M — Series 90-30 Relay Output Module | 16-Point N.O. | 2A | 5–250V AC / 5–30V DC | 4 Isolated Groups | New Original

There's a reason relay output modules have remained a staple in PLC panel design for decades. A relay contact is fundamentally different from a transistor or triac output — it's a mechanical switch with true galvanic isolation, capable of handling whatever voltage the application calls for. The load circuit and the controller logic are completely separated. One output point on the IC693MDL940M can be switching 240V AC to a motor contactor coil. The next point in the same module can be controlling a 24V DC solenoid valve. The group immediately beside it could be handling 125V DC. All on the same module, simultaneously, without interference.

That flexibility — mixing load voltages freely across an installation without requiring separate modules for each voltage class — is what makes the IC693MDL940M a workhorse in Series 90-30 panels that were designed to control mixed-signal machinery. It handles 16 output points across four independently isolated groups, each group capable of operating at its own voltage level.

✅ Genuine GE Fanuc / Emerson Automation. New original. Ships worldwide.

Technical Specifications

Contact Life by Load Type and Voltage

Relay contacts wear with every switching cycle. The IC693MDL940M's contact life depends directly on what load is being switched and at what voltage. GE Fanuc's official load current limitation table provides the rated contact life across operating conditions:

Two observations from this table are worth internalizing. First, contact life at 240V AC is roughly half what it is at lower AC voltages — the arc energy at 240V is significantly higher than at 120V or 24V, accelerating contact erosion. Second, inductive loads (solenoids, contactor coils, motor starters) are harder on contacts than resistive loads. If suppression circuits are used on inductive loads, the contact life approaches the resistive load figures in the table — suppression dramatically reduces the arc that occurs at contact opening.

Group Isolation — The Practical Advantage

The IC693MDL940M's 16 output points are not simply 16 identical circuits sharing a single common. They're organized into four groups of four, each group having its own common terminal isolated from the others at 500V. This architecture makes something genuinely useful possible: mixed-voltage operation across a single module.

Consider a typical panel controlling a packaging machine. Group 1 (A1–A4) switches 24V DC signals to a PLC downstream. Group 2 (A5–A8) energizes 120V AC solenoid valves. Group 3 (B1–B4) drives 240V AC motor starter coils. Group 4 (B5–B8) handles 24V AC status pilot lights. All four voltage levels operate simultaneously on the same IC693MDL940M without any cross-contamination between groups, because each group's common is independently isolated.

The alternative — using four separate dedicated output modules, one per voltage class — would consume four I/O slots on the baseplate and four times the wiring labor. The IC693MDL940M handles the entire load in one slot. For panels with limited baseplate space or for designs that evolved over time to incorporate multiple supply voltages, this matters considerably.

Suppression Circuits for Inductive Loads

GE Fanuc's official wiring documentation for the IC693MDL940M includes suppression circuit examples for both DC and AC inductive loads. The recommendation is not optional for applications involving solenoid valves, contactor coils, relay coils, or motor starters — any load with a coil winding.

When a relay contact opens while current is flowing through an inductive load, the collapsing magnetic field generates a voltage spike (the inductive kickback). Without suppression, this spike appears across the opening contacts at the moment of arc extinction. The arc itself burns away contact material, and the high-voltage spike can interfere with nearby electronics in the panel.

For DC inductive loads, GE Fanuc specifies a 1A, 200V diode wired in reverse-parallel across the load coil — the industry standard is the 1N4935 or equivalent. This flyback diode clamps the inductive spike to one diode drop above the supply voltage, eliminating the arc almost entirely. Contact life approaches resistive load figures with this suppression in place.

For AC inductive loads, a series RC snubber is used — typically a 100Ω / 0.5W resistor and a 0.022μF / 600V capacitor wired in series, placed in parallel with the load coil. This combination dampens the voltage spike at contact opening without affecting the fundamental 50/60Hz operation of the load.

These suppression components cost pennies. The contact life extension they provide is measured in hundreds of thousands of additional operations. On a relay module with no internal fuses and no overvoltage protection built in, external suppression is the most cost-effective maintenance investment available.

Load Current Derating with Temperature

One aspect of the IC693MDL940M that occasionally catches engineers during panel thermal analysis: total module current capacity decreases as ambient temperature rises. GE Fanuc's datasheet for this module includes a Load Current vs. Temperature curve showing that maximum total module current — across all 16 output points simultaneously — reduces from 16A at 10°C ambient to approximately 4–5A at 60°C ambient.

In practical terms, this matters for panels installed in warm environments: inside a control cabinet in a summer production facility, next to a heat-generating drive, or in an outdoor enclosure in a hot climate. An application that switches 16 outputs at 1A each continuously (16A total) is fine in a 10°C environment but would require derating in a 50°C cabinet. The individual per-output limit of 2A and per-common limit of 4A still apply regardless of temperature — the temperature curve addresses the aggregate thermal load of all 16 channels running simultaneously.

Good panel thermal design (adequate ventilation, avoiding heat sources adjacent to the module, enforcing cabinet temperature limits) keeps this from being a real operational constraint in most installations.

IC693MDL940 Series — Revision Letter Guide

The IC693MDL940 has been in production across many hardware revision letters, all fully functionally equivalent:

IC693MDL940A through IC693MDL940Z (and beyond in some series) — same specifications, same wiring, same electrical characteristics. The suffix letter is a GE Fanuc internal production revision identifier, not a feature differentiator. IC693MDL940M, the variant listed here, is a later-production revision in the series. Any revision of IC693MDL940 can directly replace any other revision in a running Series 90-30 system without reconfiguration, firmware changes, or wiring modification.

Where This Module Gets Used

The IC693MDL940M appears in Series 90-30 systems controlling almost every category of industrial machinery. Several applications deserve specific mention because the module's characteristics directly fit their requirements.

Motor starter control is the classic application. A contactor coil drawing 0.3–0.8A at 120V AC sits comfortably within the 2A output limit. The relay contact provides true electrical isolation between the 5V PLC logic and the 120V AC motor circuit — no shared ground, no risk of line voltage reaching the controller even in a wiring fault scenario. The IC693MDL940M's 1500V field-to-logic isolation rating covers this kind of application with significant margin.

Solenoid valve control on pneumatic or hydraulic circuits is equally common. Solenoid coils are inductive loads with moderate current draw, well within the 2A per output limit. With suppression diodes or RC snubbers in place, contacts switching solenoid coils will outlast the machinery they're installed in.

Mixed-signal panels controlling older equipment that predates standardized 24V DC I/O are exactly where the group isolation capability becomes essential. A machine retrofitted from pneumatic-hydraulic control to PLC control will often have a mix of 110V AC valve solenoids from the original design, 24V DC sensors added during the retrofit, and 24V AC pilot lights that nobody wanted to replace. All three voltage levels live on one IC693MDL940M without requiring voltage conversion hardware.

❓ FAQ — GE Fanuc IC693MDL940M

Q1: What does the "M" suffix in IC693MDL940M mean, and is it different from IC693MDL940C or other revision letters?

The letter suffix is GE Fanuc's hardware revision identifier for this module, used for internal production tracking. Revision M indicates a specific manufacturing batch in the production history of the IC693MDL940 design. All revision letters — A through M and beyond — are functionally identical. They use the same relay components, the same backplane connector, the same terminal block, and produce the same electrical behavior. The specifications in GE Fanuc's documentation (GFK-0898F) apply equally to every revision letter. An IC693MDL940M will drop into any Series 90-30 baseplate slot that previously held an IC693MDL940C, IC693MDL940H, or any other revision, and the system will not know the difference. No reconfiguration is required.

Q2: Can this module control both AC and DC loads, and can different groups run at different voltages simultaneously?

Yes on both counts. The IC693MDL940M accepts 5 to 30V DC and 5 to 250V AC (50/60Hz) on its output contacts. Because the four groups of four outputs each have independent common terminals isolated at 500V from adjacent groups, each group can run its own supply voltage. You could wire Group 1 to a 24V DC bus, Group 2 to a 120V AC supply, Group 3 to a 240V AC supply, and Group 4 to a 24V AC source — all operating at the same time on one module, without any interaction between groups. This is one of the primary reasons relay output modules remain preferred over solid-state alternatives in mixed-voltage installations: a solid-state output module is typically designed for one voltage class only.

Q3: There are no fuses on this module — what provides overcurrent protection?

The IC693MDL940M has no internal fuses, by design. GE Fanuc's documentation states this explicitly. The intended protection method is external fusing or circuit breakers upstream of the module's output terminals, sized to protect the field wiring and load devices. Standard practice is to fuse each group common at the rated 4A per common limit, using appropriately rated branch circuit fuses or miniature circuit breakers in the panel. For applications where individual channel protection is needed (high-consequence loads where a short circuit on one channel shouldn't affect the others), individual inline fuses per output terminal are used. This external fusing approach is common across relay output modules from multiple manufacturers and is covered in standard industrial wiring practice documents.

Q4: What slots in a Series 90-30 baseplate can the IC693MDL940M be installed in?

The IC693MDL940M can be installed in any I/O slot on either a 5-slot or 10-slot Series 90-30 baseplate. There are no slot restrictions for this module — it does not require a specific position relative to the CPU or power supply. The 90-30 platform uses a universal backplane architecture where any I/O module occupies any available I/O slot, and the CPU auto-configures the I/O map based on what modules it finds during startup. In a 10-slot baseplate with the CPU in slot 1 and power supply in slot 0, the IC693MDL940M can go in any of the remaining 8 I/O slots. Multiple IC693MDL940M modules can be installed in the same rack for expanded output point count.

Q5: How do the 15ms response times affect control of fast-switching loads?

The 15ms on and off response time is the maximum time from when the PLC CPU writes an output command to when the relay contact physically changes state. This figure reflects the electromechanical nature of the relay: the coil must energize, the magnetic force must build, and the armature must physically move. For most process control applications — motor starters, solenoid valves, conveyor controls, indicator lights — 15ms is perfectly acceptable. These loads don't require sub-millisecond switching precision, and a 15ms response time is essentially invisible at the process level. Where 15ms would be problematic is in high-speed sequential operations: rapid-fire pulsed outputs, high-frequency position control, or any application where precise timing to within a scan cycle matters. For those applications, a solid-state output module with sub-millisecond response is the appropriate choice. The IC693MDL940M is a process control and machine control module, not a motion control output.

Q6: What is the backplane power consumption, and how does it factor into power supply sizing?

The IC693MDL940M draws from two power buses on the Series 90-30 backplane. From the 5V logic bus, it draws 7mA with all outputs on — an essentially negligible contribution to the overall 5V budget. From the 24V relay bus, it draws 135mA with all outputs energized simultaneously. This 24V draw is what powers the relay coils inside the module. When sizing the rack's power supply, add 135mA to the 24V relay bus load for each IC693MDL940M in the system (proportionally less if not all outputs will be energized simultaneously). Standard Series 90-30 power supplies provide a rated relay bus current capacity that determines how many relay output modules the rack can support simultaneously. The IC693MDL940M's 135mA consumption is moderate — typically multiple modules can coexist in a single rack without exhausting the relay bus current budget.

Q7: Does this module work with Proficy Machine Edition and current GE / Emerson configuration tools?

Yes. The IC693MDL940M is configured through Proficy Machine Edition, which is GE Fanuc's (now Emerson's) programming and configuration software for the Series 90-30 platform and its successors. In Proficy ME, the module appears in the I/O configuration tree as a standard 16-point discrete output module and requires no special parameters — the relay output module type is auto-detected or manually assigned in the hardware configuration. Each output point maps to a discrete output bit in the CPU's memory table, directly addressable from ladder logic, structured text, or any other supported IEC 61131-3 language. The Series 90-30 platform remains supported under Emerson's automation portfolio, and Proficy Machine Edition continues to be available for system maintenance and programming updates on existing installations.