S71500 or 300/400

barryoc

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Nov 2009
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Hi everyone,

At our facility there are plans to install new plant. My preference is for the project to utilize S7-1500, profinet and ET200MP. Others want to use S7 300/400 profibus and ET200m as this is what is used throughout the rest of the factory.

Can anyone suggest a way that I may be able to convince people that the S7 1500 and profinet is the correct choice.

Regards,
Barry.
 
I would risk saying that S7-300 is on the way out. S7-400 will probably remain in the market despite being a completely different beast internally and potentially be left as a range to be used with PCS7 only.

S7-1500 is much faster than the 300's, bar perhaps the 319... the price is on par with the 300's range, it has all the usual interfaces that Siemens uses (Profibus and Profinet) and it just launched.

I don't think Siemens will tell you that they are getting rid of them, but it doesn't make sense to keep both ranges when they are so close to each other.

It seems as well that Siemens is looking into a soft redundancy option for the S7-1500... which should be interesting.

About Profinet being the correct choice... this will depend on your installation. Profinet is nice and all, but still not rated for hazardous areas. Profibus is though.

Also, Profibus gives you a higher range without having to lay down optical fibre... which is possibly not a huge price difference, but may be.

Apart from this, Profinet or Ethernet fieldbuses are a great leveller of technology and should be preferred.
 
From siemens web site:

The SIMATIC S7-1500 is the modular control system for a multitude of automation applications in discrete automation. The modular and fanless design, easy implementation of distributed structures and user-friendly handling make the SIMATIC S7-1500 an economical and easy to use solution for the most different tasks.
The new S7-1500 system supplements the existing S7-300/400 systems. S7-300, S7-400 and S7-1500 will be sold in parallel in the coming years. The S7-300/400 systems will not be phased out before the year 2020. Thereafter the components of both systems will be available for another 10 years on a spare part basis.
 
LD,

I have seen on the siemens website that the 300 will be a spare part in 2023, but cannot find that information on the 400. Some people here seem to think that the 400 will be available until 2030 and will then be available for another 10 years as a spare part. There is also the opinion that even if they are spare parts that they will be easily got. Another reason for 300/400 is that the 1500 has not been used previously by the OEM and is not proven. o_O

Can you provide a link to the quote in your previous post?

Found that link.

Thanks,
B
 
Last edited:
Some people here seem to think that the 400 will be available until 2030 and will then be available for another 10 years as a spare part.

I was looking into this a while back and had Siemens on the phone and my question was precisely around the S7-400 since both the 300 and 400 have similar launch dates I believe.

Their answer is that the S7-400 will be around and have gone through big modifications internally leaving the outside box unaltered.
The thing to consider is that none of the S7-1500's do redundancy, potentially they can either leave the 400 range in the same format and develop internally or wait until people's reactions to the 1500's versus the 300's dies down before introducing a new line of controllers to replace the S7-400's.
 
The last project I did, I had it quoted with both the 300 and 1500 series. Keep in mind it was only a CPU, some I/O, and an analog module, but the 1500 was quite a bit cheaper. Of course your results may vary.
 
There is also the opinion that even if they are spare parts that they will be easily got
Yes, but it will cost ya.

I would definitely not base anything on Profibus if it can be avoided. Both S7-300/400 and S7-1500 supports Profinet well so there is (almost) no reason to chose Profibus.

Only exception is if you need a redundant system similar to S7-400H with ET200M and active backplanes and profibus. Yes, in that case there is nothing similar in TIA for the time being.
 
What makes it really difficult to keep using S7-300 and STEP7 Classic is actually the HMI part.
As a comparison, we wanted to keep using MP277 panels with our S7-300 projects because we didnt like TIA, and the new comfort panels could only be programmed in TIA.
That went OK, until the MP277 was phased out. We could still get the MP277, but at an inflated price.
Finally we chose to switch over to a similar comfort panel, because the price difference was getting ridiculous (MP277 as spare was +300% against a similar comfort panel).
That in turn meant that we had to program our S7-300 PLC in STEP7 Classic, and the panels in TIA WinCC, which was a mess in itself (*).
So today we do everything in TIA. S7-1500 and comfort panels and TIA WinCC RT.

*: I know that you can program S7-300 in TIA, but of you do that, you could just as well switch to S7-1500 anyway.
And you could program S7-300 in STEP7 Classic, and the HMI in WinCC TIA, and the connect each other via the "proxy PLC", but as fas as I know that is a hassle as well.
 
My last 'real' job had a bunch of S5's.... they still have some running, I wish they used 300's at the time, by the time 300's are over I will be retired but I still would rather install a 1500 because it will be around after the 300's are forgotten just like the S5's, they just bought a input card for 500.00 bucks off me but it would cost much more to upgrade the machine, its one of those machines that are 'on the way out' for the past 10 years.

I would install the 1500's for several reasons, cost, software, future additions, etc, I would never install a 400, the cabinet would need to be to big :)
 
Last edited:
Jesper
I think your exaggerating a little bit. It’s not a “mess”

You create a proxy in Portal and browse your .s7p file for your Step7 V5 project
Clean-no
Messy - no
Easy - yes
 

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