True Story; I have been in machine maintenance since 1972. I started this profession as a Millwright / Machinist for Clabber Girl Baking Powder, In Terre Haute, Indiana. It was the first job where I was introduced to 480 Volts ac. Back in those days 480 Volts ac was still use in control circuits, and I found out quickly that you did not touch the screws on a switch with the power still connected. I almost pissed myself the first time I did, man did that hurt. Later on OSHA and insurance companies mandated that all control circuits had to be 110 Volts ac or lower, so my job got a lot less dangerous, at least on the control side. Later in 1975 when I joined the army, they saw I had an electrical / electronics aptitude and that is where I have been ever since. After I broke my back in 1979, and the profile basically put me out of the army in 1982, I went to college and got a degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation. I have been in the field since then. In 1985 I started working field service for a company called Scherer Industrial Group, out of Indianapolis Indiana, and we were the “go to” people of Indianapolis and the surrounding area for AC and DC drives, Electronic controls, and electric motor installation, repair and troubleshooting. Mike Ward, one of my best friends and one of the best tech’s I have ever known, worked there with me. We had lots of experience with everything from 4500 HP 4160 Volt ac synchronous motors to 1/8 hp dc motors that looked like they belonged in an R/C toy car. The years at Scherer industrial taught me on thing, the customer almost never has a clue as to why the machine isn’t running. If they did they would fix it! I have had calls to places like Chrysler, Lilly and BP petroleum where all I had to do was push a button, or change a fuse and the machine was OK. I have also had calls to the same places that took days to figure out where the problem was. One of those long call problems turned out to be nothing more than expansion of metal in a hot plant. That took all my skill to narrow down as all answers kept coming back to there was nothing wrong, yet it would stop working accurately. That was my first time trouble shooting a rotary table machining center, and it turned out that as the table expanded the tooling wouldn’t mill / drill / tap in the proper place on the work piece. The customer had called us in because they were sure that there was something wrong electrically and wanted us to fix it. I had an epiphany that day as I was driving home, and the next day we got laser measurement tools and sure enough the table expanded about 1/8 inch from 6:00 am to 1:00 pm. Funny how that seems to happen to me all the time, I won’t be able to find the problem at first, then when I take a break, or stop thinking about the problem, it all of the sudden comes to me. Guess I really never let the problem go in my sub conscious, and eventually it yell at me when it figures it out. Again though I had spent the whole day running down electrical / electronic circuits per the customers “it’s this” or “it’s that” statements and they were 100% wrong. It’s like when somebody tells me that something won’t work because it’s shorted. I’m here to tell you that in 99% of the cases, if it is “Shorted” it will either blow fuses, or let out that magic smoke that it can’t run without! Most electrical / electronic failures are “opens”, that means the electrons can’t jump from one place to the next to complete the circuit. Shorts mean they have very easy paths to return to the place they came from, hence high currents, hence blown fuses! Anther thing I hate to hear is the “fuse is good”; there is 110 Volts ac across it! What a dumb ass statement. That means the fuse is OPEN (bad) as a fuse should be a short and across a short you read 0 Volts! Any questions? Moral to the story, never believe the customer, they don’t have a clue other than it doesn’t work. PS, re-posted because of the spelling NAZI!
Posted on: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 00:03:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015