O.T. Strangest 2am call out

[scalelar]

One of if not the best controls engineers I ever worked with was female. She would also out work all of her male associates. Work till 2am and back in at 6am for days.

 

[JeffKiper]

We always called them aS$ antlers.

 

[bornwild]

I had a moment with bubba few weeks ago.
Me: Hello
Bubba: Plc is not working.
Me: what do you mean not working
Bubba: It is not getting on. Can you please come
Me: ok

Went there found no power to power supply. Ask Bubba where the power line coming from .Bubba checked and told this the transformer. Bubba checking all near the tranformer the breaker but cant find it. I check the diagram and found he was looking at the wrong transformer. I went and opened other electrical panel reset the breaker and started. This Bubba is working for 30 years in this company. I was not even born when he started working. I feel bad for him though. The plant managers ask me what took so much time .I just had to cover him and told that there was blah blah blah

 

[Ned_Flanders]

I had a Bubba incident two days ago - I was trying really hard to sort it out on the phone and not to go back in as I dont get paid for it.

Maintenance manager: We can't start the line and all the drives are flashing red on the HMI.
Me: Have you checked the 24 volts?
Manager: Yes, all the breakers are in.

Much later and several phone calls later

Colleague: Er... it's working now.
Me: What was it?
Colleague: 24 v control fuse.....

 

[Firejo]

I think I saw Bubba on Cops last night

 

[Mike Lamond]

bornwild, you reminded me of a service call I made back at my first job as an engineer. Bubba's boss had opened a commercial laundry in an empty supermarket using an assortment of second-hand equipment. He'd built a decent business servicing local hotels and restaurants in their resort town. One of the washers had been retrofitted with an upgraded fluid dispensing system but the IDEC FA2J PLC running it had suddenly faulted. The company that made system had gone out of business and he was referred to us since we used a lot of that model. The program turned out to be intact except for some bad settings which I was able to restore to get the washer running again. The only backup on site was a copy of an uncommented listing of the ladder logic.

As I was looking over the washer, I noticed that the PLC power came through a cord plugged into a receptacle on a nearby steel column. Plugged in next to it was Bubba's circular saw! I suggested that they find a dedicated circuit for the PLC and also replace the madly buzzing drum motor starter, but they didn't seem too concerned. Since we were about an hour from the nearest city, I figure Bubba was a local handyman type who could do some wiring, repairs and carpentry but hadn't yet heard of clean power for electronics.

 

[I is a noob]

Had a bubba moment.
Had an "Electrician" who has climbed poles, ran a service truck, wound motors, and was a foreman be fore he joined the company we work at.Had a PLC(connected to a radio)down and he left it down for the entire working day(8hours) and called me at the end of the day just as i was walking to my car. He said he had tried to trouble shoot it and the radio was "blinking" and that it had to be a issue with the SCADA server. I went out there and the run light on the PLC was off. Since all the logic and setpoints were saved to flash memory i just cycled power and it took off.

 

[leitmotif]

I wonder - Sometimes you tinker with it and then get blamed for breaking it by tinkering with it.
Other times you dont tinker because you werent sure and catch the same tail chewing.
Good thing it is all on company time.

Dan Bentler

 

[agarb]

I am the only controls engineer for an OEM. A couple years ago, one of our machine tools used in manufacturing went down. Bubba somehow determined the PLC-2 processor was the problem so he bought a used processor from somebody and tried to install it. Of course it doesn't work and he calls me over to help. By now, Bubba has lost the program in the original processor. Of course we had no backup copies of the logic nor any way to download the old program even if we had it. Called machine tool manufacturer. Found out they didn't have an electonic copy but did have a marked up hardcopy. I bought a PLC-5 processor and spent a couple days re-entering the logic by hand and then debugging all the mark-ups on the hardcopy. Then we found the loose wire that made the machine go down in the first place.

Fast-forward two years on the same machine. Bubba calls me saying the servos won't run and can I come "hook up to the PLC and tell me what's wrong?" I walk down to the machine and Bubba is probing away with a multimeter. I ask how he can even start to work on the machine without a set of prints. Bubba stalks off and returns with a partial set of oiley, greasy drawings. I find the servo drive and the enable circuit. Tell him to check the voltage on the enable pin. Sure enough, nothing there. He says, well, I'll just jumper it on. I tell him all the limit switches, etc. are there for a reason and he better not jumper them out. He ends up finding a metal shaving jammed in one of the over-travel limits switches.

 

[Franky_B]

Once (long time ago) was at a customer site, and the technical guy (at age, learned his skills at sea, 'in the old days we etc. etc') was complaining up and down, left and right about our machine.

I had to have a hole drilled in the cover, and since I didn't have a drill with me I asked him for assistance.
Off course he helped me out, and a minute later I found him complaining cursing and swearing about the drill being blunt.
What I actually could see very clearly, was that the drill was rotating in the false direction.
I let him sweat for a while.

Greetz

 

[kongshitt]

As a field installation tech, I see LOTS of things like this. The best ever was when the operators had shut the conveyor systems air off to hand push units, because the main line was full. At 6am the plant engineer calls me in because he has been there for an hour and one drive section wasn't running. The 3phase motor lockout switch (at the motor) was off. I turned it on and told him that his "electron interrupt was set to O-F-F, just set it to O-N" he then asked me what O-N was... it was all I could do not to laugh

 

[Jeebs]

It wasn't me , I swear !!!

I wonder - Sometimes you tinker with it and then get blamed for breaking it by tinkering with it.
Other times you dont tinker because you werent sure and catch the same tail chewing.
Good thing it is all on company time.

Dan Bentler

On certain production lines ( and certain operator) I can just walk past a machine with a PC and next time the machine stops ....Its my fault because I was there!!!

 

[aikona]

typical call

Problem happens at about 8 or 9 in the morning.But only after I left the factory ( still in car going home or just got into bath )do they ( multiple bubba's) call me .Problem : Motor not working Solution changed fuse , not working ,then changed ... motor , starter ,cable(s) ,luckely before they decide to change something on the PLC they call me.

Then I start to ask the stupid kind of question like did you press start ? , is the control voltage ok ? ... That should fix it .With modern tools like PC's and VPN , scada with loggin etc where you can connect from home it even more damaging because you can tell Bubba what he's been up to .

Problem is : The plant has been idle for best part of the day ,I fix it in 10 seconds ... Bubba's are bound to do damage control and start lying,cheating and even do some real damage to plant.

In a previous live , a co-worker accused me from sabotage because my software worked and his didn't.
The Manager called me in and said to me : I know you did not do it but if your co-worker can prove it ... your out ... and no he couldn't prove it.He got moved to another department.

 

[Michael Hunt]

Bubba Rings my colleague and says he cannot get a pressure test to pass. My colleague says the problem is whatever is causing the hissing noise of leaking air He can hear in the background.

 

[skywalker309]

On certain production lines ( and certain operator) I can just walk past a machine with a PC and next time the machine stops ....Its my fault because I was there!!!

That has happened to me, people always says it's your fault it stop because you were doing something with the machine. The tend to forget that is because of us that does machines work the way they should.