CTi supported in SA

SCADA/HMI

March 2006 SCADA/HMI

For many years Control Technology 'CTi' has been the preferred engineering company responsible for the design, manufacturing and support of the many 'Specialty Modules' for the TI505 series PLC range from Texas Instruments. When Siemens purchased Texas Instruments 'Ti', arguably with the intent to establish a foothold in the USA market, Control Technology, continued to manufacture the Ti 505 'Specialty Modules' and also expanded its product range to include all basic I/O cards as well.

Although product prices escalated, the Texas Instrument or Ti 505 PLC series (now renamed to Simatic Ti or Simatic 505) remained a firm favourite with its loyal users, in fact the install base has been reported to have increased substantially under these difficult conditions. Testimonials from satisfied users confirmed that the 505 PLC product range with its robust design, ease of implementation, ease of programming and reliability, the total reduced cost of ownership looks set to ensure that the 505 product will continue to be a favourite under the CTi brand name.

The TI505 series, which is a scaled down version of the TI565 PLC was arguably 20 years ahead of its time when released. Features include automatic I/O determination in the field, comprehensive diagnostics, memory and system management, pre-programmed alarms and PID loops with fill in the block configuration face plates and an instruction set that includes loop _pack and alarm _pack instructions speeding up PLC/scada communications. All of this is programmable in mnemonics with a basic type language in special functions with floating point maths capability that can run as prioritised, cyclical, time-based or event driven allowing the passing of parameters to other special functions and subroutines.

The install base of the 505 product remains significant in the USA and many other countries around the world. Due to the reliability of the product and the way the product architects have designed the upgrade migration path, customers can keep their costly investment in code and commissioning while changing from one generation of Ti to another.

The continued support from the thousands of loyal customers around the world (and the decision by Siemens to make the product obsolete in the near future) CTi and FasTrack Softwares Inc have elected to manufacture a CPU to replace the current range of CPUs from Siemens.

CTi and FasTrack the current manufacturer of the 505 Soft-shoe (TI series programming software) have decided to manufacture and launch 4 new CPUs, the 2500-C100 will replace the TI545-1105, the 2500-C200 will replace the TI545-1106, the 2500-C300 will replace the TI555-1105 and the 2500-C400 will replace the TI555-1106.

In South Africa, Anytech has backing from CTi in supporting the CTi TI505 series, as well as earlier systems, such as the TI500 and 5TI. Agnatic carry stock of the 505 series components in southern Africa and can supply refurbished items for most of the 500 series.

Anytech also offers Windows based 32 bit programming software for the 505 PLC platform and the Siemens S5 PLC platform from FasTrack Softwares. The 505 WorkShop software can be used to upgrade 505 Soft-shoe and Tisoft with the additional features as well as allowing Tisoft users to still use the same hot keys and instruction set.

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SCADA/HMI

CTi supported in SA

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