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Siemens S5 spare

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As lot of company uses the Siemens S5 plc. But Siemens India does not provide service or support. What we can do ? Do we have more user of S5 pls who are facing similar supply or service problem for Siemens S5 PLC ? Please inform we can work together. Thanks Gemini Mehta

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I believe Siemens quit supporting S5 platform sometime ago. The best way to look for parts is on third party used plc sites or if your company has multiple locations, sometimes, someone has spares in house. The best course of action is to upgrade to S7 Siemens PLC if possible.

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Upgrading to S7 can be quite painfull. If the system is fairly straight forward (Mainly Ladder/CSF blocks, may be a bit of analog, but nothing complex) then the actual program conversion is fairly easy, the converter that Siemens give you works. However with more complex systems then you end up having to do quite a bit of reprogramming. Add this to the cost of the Hardware, recommissioning and lost production while you do the upgrade, and you are spending significant amounts of money on changing kit which actually has nothing wrong with it (other than the fact that Siemens wont support it/cant get spares). In many cases there are no other justifications for major system changes. This really means that Siemens are driving this change by their commercial policies, and at a time when certainly in the UK companies are struggling with increasing material costs and energy costs it is a cost which companies can do with out. Siemens traditionally have a large installed base in the UK, but they have upset a lot of users with their approach to the S5 - S7 changeover, and I suspect are losing customers as a result, after all if you have to change the hardware and rewrite the software then recommission the whole system you may may as well look at other manufacturers kit as well. Fortunatley quite a few companies are recognising the problem, (Vipa, Helmholz etc) manufacturing clone hardware, and hopefully more will jump on the bandwagon so I think whatever Siemens try to do S5 will be around for quite a while. I think this situation is unfortunate as 20+ years of experience with S5 has shown it to be reliable kit, and S7 seems to be following on in this vein. Anyway rant over! Edited by Mike Dyble

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Hi Gemini There is a company here in the U.K. Lektronix Ltd that sells and repairs many electronic components uncluding Siemens S5. There website is www.lektronix.co.uk and I think they also have an office in Dubia. Rodney Edited by Rodney

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It is fantastic such a long lifespan S5 has had until now. But nursing old S5 installations will become progressively more cumbersome and expensive. As of now, there is 5 years left until the last obligation from Siemens to supply any spare will cease. After that, you can probably get a part repaired if you need, but it will be e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e ! Any serious plan for continuing a machine/plant/proces that has S5 in it, should mainly be about how to exchange everything S5 with something newer. And that "something newer" doesnt necessarily have to be S7. But it is not a bad choice (opiniated !) edit: Wrong wrong. Not only does every complex piece of machinery and electronics have a typical unavoidable "bathtub" failure rate over time. Even if spares could be purchased from Siemens, failures will increase progressively at the end of the natural lifespan. Downtime and expenses will explode.At the same time, it will be foolish not to reap the advantages of evolution. New PLC hardware and software is less expensive, has higher performance and has much more functionality. I have participated in a number of complete exchanges of S5 for S7, and the expense was less than a few years of maintenance of the old S5 equipment. The new plants can run for another 15 years with better functionality than before. Edited by JesperMP

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In my last contract we had 46 S5-155U systems, with H1 comms, various CP and IP cards for comms with other devices, and OP30 operator interfaces and a Factory Link scada system, the whole lot dating from around 1993 - 1995 ish. Apart from OP30's which have not proved reliable everything else has been very reliable, and we were certainly not into the end of life failures, and we were looging all faults as part of trending to recognise just these problems. We did 2 s5 - s7 conversions, to release spares that had become unavailable, and both of these were fairly tricky. Some of the problems were caused by trying keep things the same as they were with s5 rather than starting fresh and doing things the 's7' way, which was a result of management pressure, so you cant blame s7 for that, but there were quite a lot of other problems. Because the plant limited the performance anyway there was no performance gain by upgrading to s7, and all the techs are familiar with s5 so s7 upgrades also involved more training. Also new software, laptops etc, when you add up all the additional overheads it can actually cost more than the original installation. I've been around s5 since 1985 and in general even installations dating from that time are still not showing signs of failing due to age. (apart from problems with 921 processors, and the 150U processors, which always seem to have been a bit tempremental). In general plants dont run any quicker if you change the PLC, so the only driver is obsolesance in a lot of cases. Management then look at the costs of upgrading and usually have a fit. With the UK being a 'high cost' country anyway, multi-nationals are relocating abroad all the time. Over the last 10 years 2 major companies have gone completely and 2 others have partially relocated from my 'home area' and whilst I am not blaming s5 obsolesance for this it's another cost for already hard pressed companies. I realise things have to progress, but I do feel Siemens have pulled s5 earlier than they should have done, and as a result have caused a lot of problems, certainly in the UK, and I am taking a local view as that is my livelihood.

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My personal experience is that the failure rate of S5 parts do increase. I have had problems with CPUs, PSUs, backplanes (!), positioning modules, and of course - operator panels. When we do an upgrade we do not waste any time with trying to convert old S5 projects, but start with a clean slate for the PLC and HMI programs. It is much faster for us to use our current framework for making a project, than trying to convert ancient S5 code. If you have machines with a sequental operation, and the total sequence time per part is short, and the number of steps are many, then you WILL experience a performance boost by simply exchanging for faster PLC hardware. Not much, but every 0.1% counts.

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java script:emoticon('', 'smid_5') I have found the Site WWW.AutomationSpare. Com. They are supplying the Siemens S5 PLC Cards in INDIA with 1 Year warranty. They are all most 60 % Cheaper than Clasicautomation or Lektronix etc. I think for INDIAN S 5 PLC user it is a best news. We can postpone the up gradation to S7 as that does not help in either quality or production Improvement. WWW.AutomationSpare.com is a best site / company providing S5, siemens s5 PLC spares. I have tried it It works fine both in quality and price. Cheers ! java script:emoticon('', 'smid_5') I have found the Site WWW.AutomationSpare. Com. They are supplying the Siemens S5 PLC Cards in INDIA with 1 Year warranty. They are all most 60 % Cheaper than Clasicautomation or Lektronix etc. I think for INDIAN S 5 PLC user it is a best news. We can postpone the up gradation to S7 as that does not help in either quality or production Improvement. WWW.AutomationSpare.com is a best site / company providing S5, siemens s5 PLC spares. I have tried it It works fine both in quality and price. Cheers !

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If you're in India, Lektronix International Ltd have just opened a branch in Pune, India. Check out Lektronix India Website and you're sure to find what you're looking for!

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