Siemens S7 Printing instrumentation levels

I am wondering (since searching for material came up short) if anyone has some in sigh as to how I can print instrumentation levels from a Siemens S7.

ie: Process is a water purification skid (Production water or better known as "salt water" not drinking water)

Process will start and once completed, customer needs a print out of
PH levels
Water weight
and a few others that I just cant think of at the moment.

Any direction pointing would be greatly appreciated!

There are several different ways to do this.
One way is to use a serial port on the PLC to send to a serial printer. The following links may be of help:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=57073
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=7414

You can go through a HMI (Human Machine Interface) to the printer.

Communicating to the PLC through a computer running a software package is also an option. This way you can have a print out and store in a database.
Depending on the PLC you can use AdvancedHMI to communicate Modbus to the PLC.
S7-1200 Modbus TCP Server
Computer running AdvancedHMI Modbus TCP Client
https://sourceforge.net/projects/advancedhmi/

Hope this helps you out.
Regards,

gclshortt said:

There are several different ways to do this.
One way is to use a serial port on the PLC to send to a serial printer. The following links may be of help:
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=57073
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=7414

You can go through a HMI (Human Machine Interface) to the printer.

Communicating to the PLC through a computer running a software package is also an option. This way you can have a print out and store in a database.
Depending on the PLC you can use AdvancedHMI to communicate Modbus to the PLC.
S7-1200 Modbus TCP Server
Computer running AdvancedHMI Modbus TCP Client
https://sourceforge.net/projects/advancedhmi/

Hope this helps you out.
Regards,

Click to expand...

That helps a lot, thanks. I do not have an option to have a computer in the mix (it is a remote skid) so serial printer and HMI might be the only options. any recommendations for a printer? It just has to individually display the average of 8 parameters.

If this was a rockwell based system I wouldnt have a problem but I have only dealt with Siemens one time and as you can tell by my username I am not a fan haha.

I would check Zebra printers. Serial printers are not that common.
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=80263

https://support.zebra.com/cpws/docs/eltron/2844z/2844z_comm.htm

I like the username!
Regards,

“If this was a rockwell based system I wouldnt have a problem but I have only dealt with Siemens one time and as you can tell by my username I am not a fan haha.”

So what would you do if this was AB?
Because you would have spent 5 times as much and put Factory Talk on this?

So put a small Siemens hmi on it with a usb printer and print out a report
Jeez

Doesn't this depend on the printer?

Dot matrix printers work off of RS-232 and ASCII. A simple serial port on the PLC is more than enough for what you want.
You can even be creative and give the opportunity to print alarms or other information on request.

Sure the printer is more expensive than a 30 dollar printer, but it's more reliable and an RS232 card is likely not that expensive compared to an HMI and most certainly to a Rockwell HMI.

As a general advice to yourself, don't hate the tools when the problem is yourself. Plenty of people use and love Siemens products, so certainly the problem is that you need to learn how to use them instead of hating them.
This goes for any brand by the way and I know many people who hate Rockwell or others brands that this applies to.

“As a general advice to yourself, don't hate the tools when the problem is yourself. Plenty of people use and love Siemens products, so certainly the problem is that you need to learn how to use them instead of hating them.
This goes for any brand by the way and I know many people who hate Rockwell or others brands that this applies to”


Agreed!
And I think the user name is childish!