Last night I came across a weird situation at the plant. A hydraulic unit wasn't running, but it should have been. Closer inspection revealed smoke curling up from small openings in an enclosure. When I opened the enclosure, the control transformer burst into flames. Closing the door extinguished the flames.
What's strange is that we've been having issues with the hydraulic unit dropping offline intermittently all week. We thought it was a bad e-stop, but now I'm thinking the control transformer may have been intermittent. I've seen lots of transformers fail, but not in this way. Has anyone else?
The hydraulic unit has two pumps. Only one can run at a time. Interestingly, the starter for one of the pumps was found to be stuck in last week. Contacts were completely fried. I'm guessing this was from rapid pulsation of the starter coil, probably due to the transformer dropping out.
What's strange is that we've been having issues with the hydraulic unit dropping offline intermittently all week. We thought it was a bad e-stop, but now I'm thinking the control transformer may have been intermittent. I've seen lots of transformers fail, but not in this way. Has anyone else?
The hydraulic unit has two pumps. Only one can run at a time. Interestingly, the starter for one of the pumps was found to be stuck in last week. Contacts were completely fried. I'm guessing this was from rapid pulsation of the starter coil, probably due to the transformer dropping out.