Connecting S5 to S7 possible?

Hello everybody
Is there any solution to connect PLC S5 to S7?
anybody has some experience about that?

Yes there are solutions but more information is required, PLC type, Data type etc.

Sure, there's:
-Ethernet
-Profibus
-Simple I/O's

We've used them all.
Granted Simple I/O's to do data transfer can be a bit tricky, but it's possible.

The only solution that makes sense:
Replace the S5 with something up-to-date.

Do not invest a lot of money in the old S5 system !
If you already have a new S7 system coming in, then it is a no-brainer to also replace the old S5 with an S7.

JesperMP said:

The only solution that makes sense:
Replace the S5 with something up-to-date.

Do not invest a lot of money in the old S5 system !
If you already have a new S7 system coming in, then it is a no-brainer to also replace the old S5 with an S7.

Click to expand...

Agree but they may also be trying to save money....

We had a S5 that was running very good, we needed to add to the machine another pick and place station, it was going to take about another 50 I/O's, we added another PLC and replaced a push button station with a HMI, the push button station had about 50 I/O's that were saved by the HMI

We just used a some digital I/O's to exchange information from one PLC to the other, it was a good project the machine is still running good it also saved a lot of money by using the old PLC, labor for re-working and hardware for not changing it out

geniusintraining said:

Agree but they may also be trying to save money....

Click to expand...

To my opinion, it is the modification to the S5 to allow it to communicate with the modern world that is an unnecessary expense.
Upgrading has to be done sooner or later (preferably sooner !), so the upgrade cost has to be accounted for anyway.
The exception is if you plan to just run the plant for as long as it it can before it dies from old age.

In my department, we are beginning to have a quite nice business with upgrading older plants. We are ripping out old S5 PLCs or relay controls, and replaces them with S7. Our customers are beginning to realise that it is too risky to rely on old S5 PLCs. Just a few days unplanned downtime equals the expense for the upgrade.
Add to that, that the cost for S5 spares is skyrocketing, it pays off even more to take the jump. One our customers decided to do the upgrade after he had purchased a spare 944B CPU and saw the bill.

For a simple low cost transfer of DB DW's look at the S5 to MPI transfer cable from process-informatik.

JesperMP said:

The exception is if you plan to just run the plant for as long as it it can before it dies from old age..

Click to expand...

This is the case for 90% of the plants I walk into, they are ALL looking at today and not for the future.... they are doing what they have to just to make their numbers look good,

The trend I see here in the US.... Most of the plant managers last 2 years on average, so they look where they can cut back and still improve production and this is for today not 3 or 5 years from now