An operator, not a maintenance technician, attempted a maintenance function to clean a filter. That required un-wiring two motors. He did.
Then the flash, bang and the magic smoke came out! (doing so with power on,...not good) Nobody got hurt so any personal injury attorneys reading this can go away now. The distributor of the equipment was called. They dropped this line of equipment primarily due to lack of support. A call was then placed to the manufacturer of the controls. Their technician was called in and was able to replace the damaged board assembly that the operator let the smoke out of. He was not familiar with the machine just his brand of controls. A main relay was not pulling in. He had done what he could do and left. Then we got a call. By this point the customer had spent several days and several thousand dollars and still did not have a working machine. After verifying what had happened initially and what had been done since, our folks started in. What we eventually found was that the original manufacturer of the machine had mislabeled two cables. The controller technician then used the labels to re-connect the cables after he replaced the defective parts. The system detected the configuration error and stopped the startup sequence. We swapped the cables to the correct ports. Production was back and all were relieved. (I am not sure what happened to the operator) The next time this customer had an equipment problem, we were not the fourth call!
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One of our Customers had declared ERS Automation is essential to their continuing operations.
We were not originally sure how we were to be designated. As we were attempting to determine our status we received the letter. All that to say that we are open, officially! Coronavirus, Manufacturing and ERS Our understanding as of today, March 13, 2020
Where does that leave ERS and our Customers?
...and, it's a new piece of equipment and the vendor can't get a part until tomorrowBy Bob Tenney, for ERS Automation
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Bob Tenney, PresidentArchives
December 2020
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