The SIMATIC S5 was Siemens’ mainstream controller before the S7 family, yet it is still found in paper mills, steel plants, packaging lines and process industries. Its survival comes down to reliability and the high cost of rewriting proven programs.
Common S5 failure points
- Backup batteries and memory modules
- Power supplies that age in the rack
- Digital and analogue I/O cards with worn connectors
- Interface modules in distributed S5 systems
Keeping an S5 healthy
- Back up the program from the CPU and store it in two places.
- Replace batteries on a schedule rather than when they fail.
- Keep one spare of each module type that your rack uses.
- Document the rack layout and addresses.
Planning a migration
If you do plan to move to S7, do it machine by machine and keep S5 spares until the new system has been proven in production.
Browse our SIMATIC S5 spares, or ask us about a module that is not listed.