Siemens retrofit saves day for boiler cylinder manufacturer

By Adam Daffern

A manufacturer of boiler cylinders needed a quick fix when an old Siemens S7-200 PLC broke down on a critical machine.

Our engineers were quickly on site in Wakefield to repair the unit and have the company back in production the next day. To safeguard the machine's long term operation, we planned a retrofit of the PLC, to parts that aren’t obsolete.

A Siemens S7-1200 PLC was selected, as this was the closest modern replacement to the original along with a Unified four-inch HMI. Our technical services engineers studied the operation of the machine and prepared the new PLC program off-site to allow for a quick swap over.

The retrofit was undertaken in a morning’s downtime, and the machine was back up and running for the afternoon shift to continue production. The customer was happy with the service, commenting that our new program managed to save a bit of time per cycle of the machine which allows more production throughput.