Neanderpundit

Whenna machine that complex has a massive event like this one, it has layers of built in safeties that react to keep the most important pieces from damaging themselves. And those safeties latch themselves in place and sometimes electronically finding their little cul-de-sacs and letting them out of them is a challenge at best, this machine has ten full axis of movement with several more to deal with tool changing etc..

So even once you have repaired the short, and chased the I/O link all the way down the line and made sure all the devices are playing nice with one another, you end up diging through the PLC program finding all the little safeties written in by the programmers. If you lose power, this servo brake engages, if this servo brake engages, the servo command drops to zero, if the servos go off, the doors unlock, the toolchanger door lock latches shut, etc. etc. etc.

After i got all the physical repairs made, the software hunting took me from nine thirty to six. Then, when you hear that big MCR pull in, the hydraulic pump comes on, the spindle fans come on, it’s like a rebirth. And the co-workers didn’t mind too much that I sang the first eight bars of “ode to Joy”.

Glad to have that one behind me. They don’t write procedures for things that aren’t ever supposed to happen, so making it up on the fly is never fun. And the young turk engineers just ran; pussies. I’m the one who is supposed to be old and inflexible and unable to learn new shit.

Weather and work combined. I fried a motherboard on a machine, a costly error, and it has set back an overdue project by a day. I double and triple checked my wiring and it was all correct, then I discovered that one of the vendor suppliers installed an MOV with an improper voltage rating. An item designed to protect the circuit, instead destroyed it. Nice.

So at least I don’t feel too stupid. I did my part, but I failed because I trusted the vendor. So tomorrow the new board is upposed to arrive, and i get to put it back in.

And because I was swamped the last couple days and was not able to do it justice, go and read Pascal’s comments on Reagan’s birthday. They are worth your time.