For most automation systems the time eventually comes for an upgrade. Such was the case at CBi Electric Aberdare ATC Telecom Cables’ factory in Brits, where a particular automation system was in dire need of refurbishment. One of the Optical Fibre SZ Stranderlines was controlled by a Siemens S5-135U system with InTouch version 5.6 software running on a PC equipped with Microsoft version 3.1. Siemens has discontinued the S5 equipment, so, because of the potentially critical impact this could have at CBI Cables, Iritron was contracted to upgrade the system to a Siemens S7 300 PLC and a PC running Windows XP. The company was tasked to do the removal of existing S5 equipment and then install and commission the new PLC hardware into the existing enclosures for the Stranderline. The new system runs on InTouch V9.5 software from Wonderware with a 1000 Runtime tag licence.
The conversion of the InTouch system needed to progress in stages. The existing software was so old that it was not possible to just replace it with the newer version. Due to some changes to the database, the old data had to first migrate from version 5 to 7, and finally could be upgraded to version 9.5. All the tags in the InTouch system needed to be remapped as initially the tags were to words, in later systems these data items refer to bytes. This whole process, approximately 400 analog and digital tags, needed to be managed. The multiplexing of the Kevlar server’s tension control cycle was another problem as it was too fast. Marius Swanepoel from Iritron had to insert a time delay to slow down the block call, as the Siemens system was sending the information at too high a speed. All analog I/Os needed to be rescaled due to the conversion to S7 technology.
The team who worked on the project was Marius Swanepoel, Johan Janse van Rensburg (senior), Zander Young and Reghardt Strydom. The client, Henry Viviers, systems integrator at CBi Cables, was delighted with the timely completion and the way the project was executed. The management of Iritron congratulates the team on a project well done.
Iritron team leader Frits Stoop (left) with CBI Cables’ Henry Viviers in the cable wrapping section of the Brits plant
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