Abstract: A method is described for communication among equal-access stations of a ring-shaped, serial fiber-optic bus and to a device for carrying out this communications method. One station, during a bus cycle, generates container messages in a strictly time-cyclical manner, addresses them, and provides them to the serial bus, and it transmits a synchronization message at the end of the bus cycle time, each station writing its data into container messages that are addressed to it, and each station, depending on its read authorization, reading the container messages of the serial bus, all the data that have been read in the stations being imported with the assistance of the synchronization message. Thus, equal-access stations of a ring-shaped, serial fiber-optic bus can exchange data, in direct-access, extremely quickly and in a strictly time-cyclical manner.

Abstract: A shaftless rotary printing press includes a plurality of individually driven printing stations and at least one separately driven folding unit. The drives which work with one folding unit in one rotation are connected to a drive control unit by a control and parameterization bus and to a device for generating a setpoint and a synchronization signal by means of a parallel synchronization bus, and the drives are each connected to the synchronization bus, which is designed as a ring bus by a bus interface. This yields a rotary printing press without shafting which is so flexible that its printing stations can be synchronized with any desired folding unit from one production to another simply and inexpensively.