Application Scenarios
A regional cement grinding plant in Southern Europe still runs three finishing mills on S7-315-2 DP racks installed in 2008, each supervised by a 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 at the local operator desk. After 14 years of shift work, two panels began showing the classic STN backlight fade — the trend curves for mill amp and separator speed were legible only if you cupped a hand over the screen. Rather than re-paneling the entire desk for TP700 Comfort (which would mean new cutouts, new Profinet cabling, and a WinCC flexible → TIA conversion the plant didn’t budget for), the maintenance lead sourced two refurbished 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 units, cloned the MMC cards from the originals, and swapped in under an hour per station. The third panel’s backlight still reads strong at 48,000 hours, so it stays — a mixed fleet that keeps the line alive while capex waits. For asset managers sitting on healthy S7-300 backplanes, the 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 is less an upgrade and more a precision spare that respects the original BOM.
Parameter
| Main Parameters | Value/Description |
|---|---|
| Product Model | 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 |
| Manufacturer | Siemens (SIMATIC TP177B series) |
| Product Category | HMI Touch Panel (color, MPI/PROFIBUS DP) |
| Display | 5.7″ STN, 256 colors, 320 × 240 px |
| Touch Type | Analog resistive (single-touch) |
| Processor | ARM, 200 MHz |
| User Memory | 2,048 KB (Flash/RAM) |
| Supply Voltage | 24 V DC (20.4 – 28.8 V range) |
| Interfaces | MPI/PROFIBUS DP, RS485, RS422, USB, Ethernet 10/100, printer port |
| Card Slot | MMC (SIMATIC HMI memory card) |
| Front Protection | IP65 (front), IP20 (rear) |
| Backlight MTBF | 50,000 h @ 25°C |
| Config Software | WinCC flexible 2005 / 2008 |
Technical Principles and Innovative Values
Innovation Point 1: MPI/PROFIBUS DP Dual Personality. The 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 speaks native MPI for direct coupling to S7-300/400 without an extra DP head, yet flips to PROFIBUS DP when the rack carries a DP master. This lets the same panel serve both a small S7-314 station and a distributed S7-417 cell without hardware change — a flexibility the newer Comfort panels lose once you commit to PROFINET-only.
Innovation Point 2: MMC Card Project Portability. Unlike the older TP170B which tied projects to internal flash, the 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 stores runtime on a removable MMC. Swapping a failed panel is a card-pull-and-insert job; no PG, no download, no re-licensing. In plants with multiple identical machines, one spare MMC set covers the whole fleet.
Innovation Point 3: Hybrid Interface Density in a Small Cutout. At 5.7″ diagonal, the 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 still manages RS485, RS422, USB (mouse/keyboard/barcode), Ethernet 10/100, and a printer port alongside MPI/DP — density that took two slots on earlier generations. For retrofitting inside an existing 192 × 138 mm cutout, nothing else in the Siemens catalog today packs this many legacy ports.
Application Cases and Industry Value
A frozen-food packaging OEM in Benelux standardized the Siemens 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 across 28 flow-wrapper machines between 2009 and 2014. When Siemens announced the TP177B EOL, the OEM did a cost-benefit on jumping to TP700 Comfort: new cutout = cabinet door rework on 28 machines, WinCC flexible → TIA conversion = ~160 engineering hours, plus PROFINET cabling the old MPI daisy-chains didn’t need. They chose instead to buy forward-stock 20 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 units and clone MMCs quarterly. Five years post-EOL, eight machines have needed panel swaps; each swap takes the line electrician 45 minutes including the MMC transfer, and the OEM has deferred ~€65 K in retrofit capex per machine. The 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 effectively became the OEM’s “extended-life” strategy — unglamorous, but the payback math is hard to argue with.
Related Product Combination Solutions
These models commonly appear alongside or as successors to the 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1:
- 6AV6641-0AA11-0AX0 – OP177B keypad+touch sibling (6AV6641 prefix = OP, 6AV6642 = TP touch-only), useful when gloved-finger key operation matters.
- 6AV2124-0BC01-0AX0 – TP700 Comfort, the spiritual successor; 7″ widescreen, PROFINET-only, TIA Portal native — the upgrade path once the S7-300 moves to S7-1500.
- 6ES7 315-2AH14-0AB0 – S7-315-2 DP CPU, the most typical MPI/DP host behind a 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1.
- 6ES7 972-0BB41-0XA0 – PROFIBUS DP connector (35° angled), the standard M12/D-sub link between panel and S7 rack.
- 6AV6671-1CB00-0AX0 – SIMATIC HMI 2 GB MMC, the storage card the 6AV6642-0BA01-1AX1 expects (smaller 512 MB / 1 GB also work for TP177B project sizes).
- 6AV6642-0BC01-1AX1 – TP177B PN/DP variant with slightly different firmware revision, often cross-interchangeable as spare.
- 6AV2123-2MB03-0AX0 – KTP700 Basic, the budget upgrade if the cabinet can take a new cutout and the line is okay moving to PROFINET + TIA.
