Siemens S7-300

[PLucas]

Nick

I won't rant on about Siemens, but I will say that as 99% of my projects now involve Siemens PLC's in one form or another, I like them!

You mentioned about training, I have been on a couple of Siemens courses at their Automation and Drives HQ in Manchester, the facilies are excellent and the instructors are pretty good as well.

Click here for details of Siemens training courses at Manchester

Paul

 

[JesperMP]

BobB:
Software dongle disk crashed - had to get another one from Singapore - took 1 week. Unable to use the software in this time as the temporary dongles were on the same floppy disk.

STEP7 works fine as far as I have experienced, even without a licence. It will display a nag-screen every-now-and-then but thats it, you can even go online.

About comparing Siemens - AB:
Yes, S7 has a much steeper learning curve, and after "mastering it" it still takes longer to program to get the same thing done (even when using reusable code).

So why do I still recommend S7 for new projects ?
Because you get a lot more bang for your buck with S7 (or you have to pay a lot fewer bucks to get the same bang). S7 (300 or 400) is approx same price as SLC-500, and 20-50% less than PLC5 and ControlLogix.
(Maybe CompactLogix can change that).

 

[BobB]

JesperMP
Because you get a lot more bang for your buck with S7 (or you have to pay a lot fewer bucks to get the same bang). S7 (300 or 400) is approx same price as SLC-500, and 20-50% less than PLC5 and ControlLogix.

Try pricing the Omron CS1 or CJ1 with very friendly easy to use software. Or Mitsubishi, software not quite as good, or Hitachi. Although, the Mitsubishi and Hitachi do not have as good an instruction set as the Omrons but most PLCs do not.
I can assure you that the CS1 is quite a bit cheaper than the SLC500 in Ozz and is far more capable, faster, more instructions, 7 expansion rack capability etc etc.
beerchug