Profibus

Hi there!!

I work with DIE CASTING Machines and I sometimes reconstruct old ones.I use ordinary wiring on S7 300 or S7 400 PLCs. But I was interested in save time (and money) .Is there anyone with experience in PROFIBUS that could give me an advice with this issue.Changing a program with ordinary I/O to PROFIBUS is easy?

Best regards

A.Durval

You need to explain in more detail what you want to do. Do you want to connect your PLCs together with Profibus? Do you want to connect your PLCs to devices or instruments with Profibus capability? When linked via Profibus you can pass lots of data back and forth with just a twisted pair instead of a bundle of wires. Tell me more.

Maybe not the first time.

I don't think Profibus DP will save you that much time the first time unless you get some one to configure it for you. Hopefully a Siemens engineer will show you how or you get some Profibus DP training. I don't think it save wiring costs unless the cable runs are long which they aren't in your case. The actual programming will be no problem as it is little different than reading I/O out of the rack.

The main advantage is the flexibility of using any Profibus DP compatible device and the fact that it is very expandable. This will be a big benefit in the future. I have seen inject molding machines with a S7-400 with no other cards in the rack. All the I/O was done over Profibus DP.