Budget friendly Siemens PLC Question

Hello,

I am an instructor for Madisonville Community College and I am creating a trainer for our new Power Plant Tech program. Our program is Siemens Mechatronic Certified and I have to use Siemens PLC for any trainers used for our program. I am looking for a budget friendly Siemens PLC that has analog/digital input and output capabilities. I would prefer a micro version. Any suggestions? Thank you and God Bless.

Jake <><

Some of the s7 200 series plcs have 2 built in analogue inputs and you can buy an analogue output expansion module. I am guessing this will come out at $300 + $100, but prices in the states may be cheaper. The programming software is reasonably easy to get going with and the plcs can be connected to HMI's etc.

I would be tempted to get a distributor to demo the system - in the current climate you might get a good deal?!!

I personally use the 300 range but this is more expensive!

Welcome to the forum.
Take a look here.
http://www.plctrainer.net/PLCTrainers.htm

Hope this helps

Siemens is very cooperative when it comes to training in schools, at least over here in Belgium. I would recommend using S7-224XP PLCs, because these have 2 analogue inputs and one analogue output on-board. If you contact your local distributor and explain your situation, you might get very reasonable discounts and maybe a version of the software you can copy on a number of computers. About 2-3 years ago they had an offer of this kind for schools over here comprised of 10 PLCs, 10 PPI cables and copyable software for the price of about 5 PLCs.

Kind regards,

I would be cautious about selecting the S7-200 range of PLCs.
It doesnt share the same instruction set as the main Siemens PLC range. And Siemens has just recently announced the successor S7-1200 that do share the same instruction set as S7-300/400. So S7-200 is entering obsolesence.

The S7-1200 isnt yet available, so if it cannot wait then I would take a look at IM151-8. It is relatively cheap, reasonably performant, and has ethernet onboard which saves on the otherwise required programming hardware. And this is relevant in a classroom with many student PCs.

Contact your local Siemens office. The discounts are very deep for School and training programs.

Nick

Thanks everyone for the valuable information. The trainer has to be built by spring 2010, but I wanted to get ahead of the game and start now. Your help has been invaluable and hopefully I can find a good discount from Siemens as our budget is very tight right now. God Bless.

Jake <><