Automotive Carpets Software Re-write

Automotive Carpets – An overnight Siemens S7-315 PLC install and software re-write.

A preheat carpet oven had developed a spurious control fault jeopardising production at a major car assembly plant in Birmingham.

We checked the usual suspects: general control circuitry, heating banks and tested all the electronics with no faults found. We finally established that an obsolete, overly complicated specialised PLC control failure was responsible by issuing random commands and ruining the sensitive “carpet cooking “ sequence.

There was no UK support for the specialised obsolete programmable controller, no software backup, no suitable spares and the Italian machine manufacture would not send personnel.

It appeared there was no escape from this one, so we started thinking out of the box. The breakthrough was, despite everyone saying otherwise, cooking carpets was not that complicated and we remembered a crossover feature of the fitted thyristors.

We fitted a readily available, conventional Siemens S7-315 controller, we knew this unit could be made to perform fast automation tasks. Additional Siemens S7 modules were taken from our PLC breakdown spares stock. The solution required software development and wiring, Frank from the Customers maintenance department cracked in the wiring overnight whilst we dealt with development in the canteen. We designed the S7 software in a manner that ensure a fast execution time.

It was a fast Siemens S7 PLC install.

07:00 the system was back in production.

PLC Control failure
Siemens S7 PLC Design
Siemens S7 PLC Install
PLC breakdown spares
Siemens S7
Birmingham UK