O.T. Strangest 2am call out

briancr

Member
Join Date
Jul 2007
Location
Port Elizabeth
Posts
231
Scenario:
Phone rings at 1 am. Shift electrician says drive keeps tripping on over current, he has tested the motor and cable, all is clear he says.

Result:
Drive ¾ hour to work, see Bubba and Bubba (shift electrician and mechanic) staring at the machine. This was when I was at least 10 meters from the machine. From that distance I could see a broken shaft, yes a broken shaft.

Needless to say, Bubba and Bubba did not get there shift allowances for the week.

At least mine was not as bad as a colleague of mine, he got called out only to find the shift electrician did not have a panel screwdriver
 
Bubba exists in every corner of the world. The USA just came up with a suitable name for him.
 
The plant where I work has a Bubba on each shift. All they have to do is tell the shift manager that they think it is a problem with the plc and the machine will sit still until I start at 7.30 in the morning.

There is another guy who,I am convinced if he doesn't know what the fault is, will look in the stores and when he finds a part we don't have will tell the manager we need to order one.
 
We have a preblender on one line and bubba left the line down because the plc was bad. None of the plc lights were on.

In the morning my boss told me to get it fixed fast. I went out there and came back to his office in under 2 minutes and told him it was ready. He wanted to know how i fixed the plc that fast. I said "It's amazing how those lights will come on and stuff will turn off and on when you plug it in".

Line was down for 14 hrs. Plant Mgr was ****ed.
 
I got called late one night about a machine down. It wouln't start and they had no idea why. I tried to talk Bubba through a couple of rudimentary checks before traveling to the plant, to which he replied "This is your problem, come fix it.".

I arrived at the plant, and Bubba watched as I checked the panel, reset the E-Stop button and started the machine, which worked fine. As i began my paperwork, he nervously said "You aren't going to bill us for this call, are you?"
 
First question I ask when they pull that b.s. on me is "Can you turn the load by hand?" Make sure there's nothing broke on the input or output of the reducer and call me back. 90% of all overload faults are caused by a mechanical bind "

Then I bombard them with "How much current did it draw on the drive display before it faulted?" How long does it run and what is the drive status while it runs?

Yeah, as soon as they try to pass you the buck, cauz' there's electrons in it.

Take a long pause and begin your query with "Get a pen and write this down."

Then go back to your rat-killing...


Paul
 
Last edited:
How about a service call that involved a flight from Midlands UK to a factory in Belgium, round trip time about 9 hours !

Even after many attempts by the company engineers to resolve the problems by telephone, I, the service engineer, was asked to go and sort it out.

Fuse blown on PSU board !!
 
Bubba complained to one of my electricians that equipment would not start. Electrician looked at HMI which displayed a message of "...Check Chain". Yup, it was laying on the ground.
 
I had a good electrician get mad and call over any little thing he could find. He called and I ignored it twice I was out at dinner with the plant manager. Then the production Guy calls the plant manager's cell "We call Jeff 10 times and he said their was no way he would come in". We both arrived at the plan. After turning on the disconnect the machine ran.

We disqualified the electrician for 30 days and made him retake the test to get qualified again.
 
Have also experienced operators that stare bewildered at a seemingly trivial alarm text message, with no clue to what to do despite that it says in the text message.
Many of the operators that work machines at strange hours or in hostile environments have the job because they cannot get other jobs. For example because of dyslexia.
Am thinking about making the HMIs more graphical with images rather than texts. But it is a lot of work, and some faults are difficult to describe with an image.
 
Jesper I used pictures on a RSView32 screen to show which fuse to pull when changing drives.
 
JesperMP said:
Have also experienced operators that stare bewildered at a seemingly trivial alarm text message, with no clue to what to do despite that it says in the text message.

If there are more than two syllables in the alarm message they refuse to actually read it in my experience.

I would estimate that of the last thousand times a machinery problem has been reported to me, the text from the alarm message was accurately conveyed about 0.5% of the time.

Me, "What was the alarm message?"
Them, "I dunno, something about motor something er other. I tried to reset it about a hundred times and it kept coming back..."

JesperMP said:
Am thinking about making the HMIs more graphical with images rather than texts. But it is a lot of work, and some faults are difficult to describe with an image.

This, I think, is a good idea. Even if it's just a flashing fuschia rectangle on a top view of the entire process line, at least they will know what part of the machine is fouled up...

In my image we use red when the motor is stopped, green when it is running, flashing red/black when accel/decel, purple when there's a problem...works pretty good.

purple.png
 
Jeff, I have you beat. :)
I have for a testing and calibration routing made a fully animated sequence with what buttons to press, what handle to turn (animated of course), when and where to insert test specimens, when to stand back, etc.
All done in WinCC Flexible with movement and visibility animations.

But how to visualise the cause of faults ?
One fault may have 5-10 possible physical causes.
 

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