Siemens 545 PLC

Ive been ask to quote a job that uses calls for a siemens 545 PLC. Now, I must be wrong, but isnt the 545 old tech? Shouldnt this job call for a S7? The PLC will control 12 flow control devieces, as well as a few temp loops and belt speed loops. Thanks alot!

Matthias

Matthias,

You are right - the 545 has been around for a few years, but Siemens still sells and supports it. Here's a link:
http://www.sea.siemens.com/automat/product/plc/505/au505ov.html

I've never programmed a 505 series plc, so I can't tell you how it compares to the S7 line. It may be that your client has a large installed base of 545s, and they don't want to have to stock new spare parts and retrain maintenance staff. If this is not the case, you may want to steer them in the S7 direction.

Kevin Hammond

correct!

Thats right, the customer wants this because they have several machines with them already. But, I also have an RFQ for replacing a plants 505s because the modules are becoming harder to get all the time. They have to resort to Ebay to get replacement parts sometimes. I looked over the Siemens site before, and it really doesnt enlighten me as to its long term viability.

The TI545 is still very much alive. I have used these and the TI555 over the past 6 years and have never had any problems getting the parts from my local Siemens distributor. While Siemens is no longer adding enhancements to this line there is no current plan to discontinue manufacturing it. There is also a company out of Knoxville, TN that supplies I/O modules for the whole 505 series. The performance is very good and the cost is less than the Siemens counterparts. They have actually private labeled modules for Siemens.
The companies name is Control Technology Inc. Their website site is

www.cti.knox.tn.us/

Hi there

We have both S5 and S7 PLC's on our site and find that the S7 is far easier to work with. We are just in the process of junking all S5's aswell. Also after a quick tour of S7 the techs on our site that were trained for S5 have picked it up no problems

If you can talk them into it go for S7 its much better

Apples aren't always apples

Although 545's are now called "seimens" up until about 4 years ago they were Texas Instruments and as such had nothing to do with S5's or S7's. Now they are called Seimens TI but still no closer to being the same. TI stuff is far easier to program than the S7's - lets not even talk about the S5's. As far as I understand they are not expanding the series but are still making modules though this may decline in a couple of years. I've always found the TI stuff to be easy to program and fault find so good luck.

The Texas Instruments 505 line is indeed alive and as good as ever!

It's true that Siemens bought the line. But things are still going strong with the 505. The latest CPU that I know of is the 575. This CPU blows the doors off of the 545 (which I also have).

As far as replacing the 505 with an S7... this might or might not be a good idea... it depends on the demand placed on the system. The S7 has some limitations on expansion. The 505 is more expandable.

I have both 545 and 555 systems. I have several S7's. I have two S7's that I'm currently connecting to the 505 via Profibus. These S7's will serve as slaves to the 505 and provide operator panel interface connection points (as well as providing local control for various inputs/outputs).

I have fully embraced the S7. This is probably because this was the final Texas Instruments effort in the PLC world. Even though I have embraced the S7, I doubt very much that I would/could be talked into giving up the 505's!

As far as Old-Tech vs. New-Tech, the 505 is WORK-HORSE! And it has not given me any grief what-so-ever! The only grief I get is from the idiot writing the code!

What exactly would New-Tech be? Internet capable (TCP/IP)?

Thanks!

Well, as far as "new tech" I was simply refering to the age of the equipment. My concern was over the long term viability of selling new equipment with the 505 series in it. From what it sounds like, the 505 still seems to be viable, especially if there are companies making modules besides Siemens. Thanks for the help everyone.

Matthias

Just as a quick note, the 505 series is already TCP/IP capable using the ethernet card available from CTI. The last version I looked at even had the capability of automatically sending canned email messages when triggered by the PLC.

At the last place I worked, we had vertually all our 505's tied into a plant-floor network via ethernet.

Steve

Siemens has also acknowledged that the 505 product line is still alive. They recently came out with a module that incorporates H1 Ethernet and/or TCP/IP in one module as a replacement or at least an upgrade of their CP-1434TF module. This was presented at last year's users' conference. There is a real lack of reprentation of folks who use the Simatic PLC's outside of the PCS hybrid DCS configuration, so if you get a chance to go and voice your needs, go to the Siemens site and consider registering for October.

I agree with the comments about the 505 series. The Simatic 555 CPU has a tremendous amount of horsepower in my opinion. Since it also has a ProfiBus master port built in, it can also support a wide range of I/O in addition to its native 505 I/O. CTI provides a DeviceNet scanner and other communications modules, so openness is not a big problem.

I have worked with the S7-200 series and found it to be very familiar. In fact, the DOS version of the programming software felt just like TISoft.

The S7-400 series is a different creature (a full blown Siemens implementation), but I really like some of its capabilities. The programming software, Step7, comes with a library of functions that duplicate some of the 505 commands. I am currently working on a project that uses an S7 414-4H safety PLC that communicates via ProfiBus with a Simatic 555. It is quite interesting to be working on these two breeds at the same time. I still prefer the 505, but I think a lot of that may just be familiarity.

The TI555 (and 545) is a very capable platform. When combined with a CTI2573 ethernet card (latest version is 100mb/s capable) this PLC can be used on an ethernet network. I currently support close to 20 PLC's in this type of installation. I use Soft-shop (hated TI_Soft but that's a personal preference thing I guess) and can connect to any of the systems via our corporate WAN. One of the sites uses a combination of (1)555 and (13)545 processors. The 555 has 6 remote base controllers (remote IO) and I also used 2 S7 IO racks connected to the Profibus port for remote IO (didn't want to shut down to add another RBC). The CTI ethernet driver is used to connect all of the PLC's to a Wonderware application. We also transfer data from/to the 555 to the other PLC's though the more critical info is hardwired. We also install TI545/555 PLC's as data concentrators in systems that make use of DCS technology. Most of the time, using a serial port to gather data to a DCS from a 3rd part device is not paricularly cost effective to do if there is more than one device. We use a CTI2573-MOD card to collect the date from 3rd party devices on one port (RS485 multidrop) and set the other port up as a MODBUS slave and connect it to the DCS. We also install a CTI2572 ethernet card so that we can add points to the poll list without having to go to the site.

Our largest 555 application has 65 PID control loops, 145 analog alarm blocks, around 1,000 rungs of ladder logic, somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 - 600 IO (analog and discrete), and numerous serial links to other devices. We also have 20 special function programs that perform some of the functions that are required for some of our advanced control loops, perform AGA7 gas flow calculations, perform scaling and unscaling, perform high and low select functions, and many others. Special Function is probably one of the handiest options that the 505 makes available.

I've used the S7 and it's ethernet card. It wasn't as robust as the CTI ethernet card in the 505 series PLC is. For instance, I've never seen the CTI card fail to accept a connection. Even with 13 other PLC's, my programming software, some trending software that I occasionally use, and up to (6) large, independant Wonderware apps (8,000 tag) banging on the ethernet port the CTI card never fails to deliver data. The WW apps are polling the driver (independant driver on each node) at 1,000ms intervals. The S7, on the other hand, did not seem to like having 3 or 4 nodes connected to it at the same time.

I love the S7. It's a great box to program. However, if given the choice, I will install a 505 series PLC every time.

The TI545 is still very much alive
we r useing it and getting benefit from it
we r useing since right from 80s
in our SCADA network
WE have TI505,545 Cpu 1101 and 1104 its very powerfull PLC we have TIDOFT .02 and lower version of application soptware
it is hard to compare wioth S7 S7 is user friendly Windows based while TI505 is ODS based TExt mode Progrtamming but still as much quick clear,correct as S7 itself. currently we goning to have Allen Bradely RS Logix 5000 softearwe and controller is 5555LOgix Lm55 with a variety of various new approcah and S7-Safety PLC S_300F
with +STEP-7 actually i m a siemens guy i dont like to work on AB its very hard to get starte with this PLC So complicated wel we have a state of the art Technical facilities regarding Siemens and AB i recomend Siemens wel any type of info u wana know tell me i will do my best in this regard
thanks

Muhammad Faisal Qureshi

Hi,
I recently work on old machine with TI545. Does anyone have the software to open my program and print it in PDF file? This software is quite expensive and i can not afford to buy it because of I only use it just once.

Thank you

Sure, just make sure all the files are in one folder then zip the folder and attach it to the thread.

service tech

jrwb4gbm said:

Sure, just make sure all the files are in one folder then zip the folder and attach it to the thread.

Click to expand...

thx