Things you don't want to hear on a start up.

[TConnolly]

I had a hydraulic pump salesman once confide to me that 25% of his pump sales came from replacing pumps ruined at start up.

 

[bigbuckaroo]

The old IT IS WHAT IT IS phrase. I really hate hearing that. Used just to cover somone elses inability to do their job in my opinion.

 

[ndzied1]

I think this sums it up

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

I isn't quite that bad for our product(s) now.

I had a hydraulic pump salesman once confide to me that 25% of his pump sales came from replacing pumps ruined at start up.

Our products startup replaces are in the low single digits because we avoid connecting high power/current lines to our controller.
That is what happens with high current/power wiring errors.

Read the post about why things are the way they are.
http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=61329

People would miswire our first generation controllers and smoke them. They assumed they were faulty so they would plug another card in and smoke it too. If they had another controller they would smoke that. Once I was having dinner with a Rockwell person incharge of the hydraulic controllers over dinner and this topic came up. I told him I had a customer burn up five boards in a row by plugging miswired cables into our board. The Rockwell guy said he had me beat by a significant margin. I have heard of the same thing happening with Temposonic rods too.

I just can't understand it. How can someone think that it is the products fault when hundreds or even thousands of the product are made each year and yet someome that wires up a system for the first time with no test procedures, no multimeter, and sometimes no wiring diagram and blames the product. Arrrgh! Then they think they should be repaired/replaced under warrenty and complain about the delay in their startup. Rockwell and Delta have some pretty good test procedures. I can vouch for Rockwell because we must implement them and have been to Rockwell to see their testing of the Control Logix before it was released in 1997 I think. I know the control logix was going through testing at the same time as the 1746-QS. We use bed of nails testing using LabView with thermal chambers and burn it racks etc.

There are still wiring errors. Usually the low level inputs and output have protection that can avoid damage with low voltage wiring errors. Relatively few are damaged now by wiring errors compared to what happened in ancient times with the QB and our first generation controllers. There are still some that can't read labels and wire up AC and let the smoke out. There is nothing we can do about that.

If you give someone the opportunity to screw up, someone will. So that is why things are the way they are.

 

[icky812]

"Line power isn't connected yet, but this generator should get you through initial testing." - about the same time that the generator started belching smoke out the exhaust just before dieing.

"Can't you just wire it up straight across?" - after the 200HP VFD bit the dust.

"It's just the fire alarm. No need to worry."

"What do you mean the skid has to be on concrete and level?"

"I don't think closing that valve was a good idea." - right after the $3k motor coupling disintegrated.


Lastly a conversation on friend of mine's start up.

"That valve must be open before that pump starts. Are you certain that it opens first?"
"Yeah. Why is that?"
"If it isn't open, you see that 1,000HP motor up there above us that drives that pump? It's going to be down here amongst us."
"I'll go check the program again."

 

[Ken Roach]

"You hooked up 120V AC to the 24V DC terminals during startup on June 21 and destroyed the controller, so you must pay for a new one to be shipped from Switzerland."

"Here's my work visa, stamped for entry to your country on July 4."

 

[dogleg43]

A campus building was being demo'd and all of the valves needed to be closed & locked out before we could start disconnecting the flow & level sensors and other various instrumentation. The Project Mgr was in charge of making sure all of that was done before we started. He specifically said all of this had been taken care of and "OK, we're good to go". Also, directed me to go ahead and disable the HMI alarm messages. I got a safe work permit that detailed what we were going to do.

Turns out, none of the valves had been shut off and some tanks overflowed after we disconnected the instrumentation. Had to hurry up and reconnnect everything.

The PM said "Good to go" didn't mean it was time to start disconnecting things, but he couldn't explain what it was supposed to mean.

48 days later we went back to finally disconnect the stuff.

 

[504bloke]

Best one i saw was when we started a 1000Kw Extruder, all good, up to heat, running at 40%, Polymer feed only....

Customer standing there shouting above the metal to metal shrieking noise...

"Whats that noise" with his fingers in his ears

By this time most of the factory had put their ear muffs on....

Manufacturer's clearance on the side feeder screw's when they got hot was a little on the TIGHT side...

A few quids worth of damage !

 

[Ken Roach]

After driving all night to get to the plant and working a double shift testing a PLC migration from a 30-year-old PLC3 to a ControlLogix, I was ready to do the final checkout of the DCS/PLC link before starting up.

As I watched, another station on the network took over editing control and began to delete the data translation routines in the ControlLogix.

"What's going on ? Who's editing my program !".

"Oh," admitted the project manager. "We don't need that now that we've migrated the PLC-3 functions to our new DCS. You were the backup plan."

 

[harryting]

"oh, dear god!"

"This project is only 1/4 of the capacity, why is the control system cost the same?"

 

[Ken Roach]

"The last three guys your company sent couldn't figure it out either."

 

[JeffKiper]

Ken those guys did know what to do after you fixed it did they?

I was on a job the 2 other guys had been on. The owners son had had his friends troubleshooting this system. Then they finally called me so the owner and his some are there with me while I am troubleshooting. The son said "this kid can't know anything he isn't old old enough". As I handed his dad a bill for fixing the machine the old grouchy owner says "these kids are getting smarter everyday aren't they son?" he had the biggest smile I think I have ever seen as he wrote the check.

 

[jamesau]

It was a long and storied commissioning....

In response to another workaround proposed by the prime contractor:
Operator 1 replies, "we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic"
Operator 2 adds, "well, at least the Titanic had a band"!

 

[KalleOlsen]

No good answer

I was loading some online changes to the CPU and it stopped. So did the production line. Unforutnally the production manager stood behind my back as this happened. He asked me "Do you really know what you are doing?". I found no good answer...

Kalle

 

[Mike Lamond]

15. Yes it is serial number 1, but it worked great in the lab!

At my first job we once supplied a telemetry unit, specified by the Engineering Firm, that barely qualified as a beta-test prototype. After several years, the village finally contracted us to replace it with FSK tone equipment.

14. We've never seen this problem before.

I admit, early in my career, problems would occur in the field for the first time instead of during development and shop testing.

13. The thermocouple wiring is completely finished. Red is positive, right?

Said by the Engineer's Project EE of the electrician's foreman, after seeing his instrumentation wiring: "He's a good man for a supermarket wiring job."

5. I tried to open the valve and nothing happened. Wait! The same valve on the other reactor just opened!!

From a former co-worker, who was tasked with fixing someone else's sequencing program: The acid and caustic valves both opened and the mixture melted the PVC pipe.

4. Should the VFD drive smoke like that?

A) Our new technician connected 480 volts to a 240 volt drive.
B) The electrician reversed the line and load connections on the drive, confirmed when circuit breaker tripped as soon as it was turned on.

2. The CEO is on the phone holding for you.

Same first job, before cell phones and email were common. I was out of state on a week-long startup and one day didn't have time to call in one afternoon before everyone went home. There were only four phones at the contractor's trailer, all with long waiting lines. The next morning, our customer's local branch manager (major international equipment manufacturer) drove over with a message from my engineering manager that I was fired! That was just to get my attention, but I should have taken him up on the offer. As it was, the company folded almost a year later.