What jobs do you like doing the best?

geniusintraining said:

Where did it land? I would hate to be your neighbor (or love it)

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They were going between 250' and 300' into an empty lot. It was on Camano Island (North of Seattle) on the Fourth of July. Camano is a few miles away from "Boom City" which is a concentration of fireworks stands on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. That translates to Camano becoming a war zone on the Fourth making it ideal for shooting the Spud Gun (it is very loud). When I shoot it at home, the cops show up
The other place I shoot it is at my brothers property outside of Ellensburg (East of Seattle). No one there cares.
The next generation will have a riffled barrel. I don't know how yet, but that's why I'm doing it (and to get more range).

ganutenator said:

troubleshooting

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That counts for sure.... and a constant sense of accomplishment when you find the problem and fix it.

At a previous job where I was an industrial maintenance electrician at a plant that built nuclear reactors. I had "Maintenance Magician" on the back of my hardhat.

I also worked with a guy that had a tattoo on his fore arm of a wizard holding a wrench.

Going into a system that the operators have been struggling with for years and getting them running right after just a few days.

OkiePC said:

I mostly enjoy filling dumpsters with old relays and wire. Demolition is my favorite.

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Good point, that is a lot of fun. Ripping out crappy work with unlabeled wires going all over the place and cleaning up a panel is extremely satisfying.

rupej said:

Good point, that is a lot of fun. Ripping out crappy work with unlabeled wires going all over the place and cleaning up a panel is extremely satisfying.

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That's like when I hired into a small shop years ago and my first project was to get a small automation machine back running. The guy that had been working on it for 4 months had disconnected half the unlabeled wires, they were hanging out the control panel door. There was no commented copy of the PLC program either.

After getting over the shock I decided to make my own PLC program, design my own schematic, and stripped out almost every wire in the panel.

That's when the other guy came to me with a legal pad FULL of notes he made from the last 4 months. Every page of the pad was full of notes and diagrams.

I told him I didn't need them (I knew what the operation of the machine was to be). He asked why not, and I told him I stripped all the wires out of the machine.

He yelled at me and asked me why I did that and I told him that none of the wires matched my pretty new schematic! (Got the machine wired, programmed & running in about 3 weeks)

After that he kept pressing me for details on how & what I did to fix something and I just told him 'I got it working'

OkiePC said:

I mostly enjoy filling dumpsters with old relays and wire. Demolition is my favorite.

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I was going to say faultfinding and solving an issue that several people have tried and failed on (always an ego boost, as if my ego needs it!), but now that I've read it, I think Okie's favourite is mine too. Who was it around here that said "some jobs are best started with a sawzall and a dumspter on castors"?

I once said to a customer, half in jest about a troublesome machine that was always breaking down - ' shall I rip everything out and start again.'
Ok - get on with it.
My love of retro-fits began there.

Getting that smile from the bigs on the job site because you've fixed a problem that they've been struggling with for a long time is a great feeling, but personally, I like authoring new programs. Being given nothing but a list of IO and a flow sheet, and breathing life of my own design into the assembly line. The never-ending challenge of making it easier to troubleshoot, more efficient, and debugging...

I wish I could do that 24/7

Taking the day off early and going to the bar.

sparkie said:

Taking the day off early and going to the bar.

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AND WE HAVE A WINNER!!

Hello, everybody!
I like to advise on various technical questions, but sometimes I want and go to the bar...

I really enjoy designing something new. Creating new processes and coding from scratch is fun. Coming up with new ways to accomplish something is just cool to me. I also learn the most that way.

Peter Nachtwey said:

Something new and challenging then see it in operation.
Like like simulations and control theory.

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Nothing like having a nice simulation of a system running and do a IO check out and then start the system and everything runs as it should. Some PID tuning and we are in business. Probably the most satisfying thing.

For me, it's taking a three door cabinet, all relay logic, and condensing it down to "half of one door", and having it function smoother, and quieter than what I walked in to.

I'm all about high-speed, complicated, coordinated motion. Calculating cam profiles, digging into network latency compensation, precision registration. That's my bag.

I'm not into HMI work at all, but do it anyway. My least favorite thing are machines with 100 proxes and timers to control everything instead of a closed loop motion control axis and using position based triggering. For some reason I have customers that get it in their head that an encoder costs thousands of dollars or some ********, but most platforms you can have a high-res encoder with input card for $300-$500 and if that saves you a dozen prox switches and improves throughput/accuracy, then it pays for itself.