Ingersoll-Rand controller replace?

J

Thread Starter

james

I have a project to control a remote air gas station which has four Ingersoll-Rand central compress. Now it's a problem that the compressor only has its own controllor. It can not communciation with our station such as siemens s7 or AB's PLC. Ingersoll-Rand ask a very high price for the replacement of the old controllor to a so called new type controlloe CMC which is still a non-open singe-chip computer board.

My question is anyone konw or have experence about replace Ingersoll-Rand controllor with a much more common controllor like S7-300?

thanks very much.
 
S

September, Clyde

Hi James,

I have just gone down this road and ended up buying the IR panel - simple reason really: AFTERSERVICE

Ingersoll S.A. were not prepared to warranty any services (mechanical) as according to them the control philosophy of the panel is intricate to the well being of the machine. In my research I came across two companies who utilised a Siemens PLC - 1 successful and 1 a disaster...!

Just something to keep in mind..

Clyde September
 
B

Bob Peterson

I tend to agree that you might want to consider just getting a replacement controller from the OEM. OEMs that supply this type of controller rarely will give you enough information to "roll your own", its just not in their best interests. In the future, it might be best to make sure you either specify they supply a name brand PLC of your choice as the controller, or at least adequate information to program your own if you have to.

This is not something that applys just to this particular company (which incidentally makes fine products), but to any OEM supplyed control systems that are some odd ball thing they make them self. The main reason this is done is strictly to be able to have a high degree of control over your customers. If you allow this, you will be sending them money all the time, which is of course what they intend you to do. Sadly, I am not aware of any really successful strategy to effectively deal with this kind of situation, other then to just go along with it.

OTOH - there are many companies that have sprung up to service such equipment other then the OEM. They do not have any reason to care what brand of controller is used, so maybe you should consider going with a third party company to maintain and repair your equipment if its that important to you.
 
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