# Working Relay Magic



## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

Did they buy it used or did it come from the factory with bad parts? Good job fixing it up, though. Nice to tear an old machine down to nothing and start wiring from scratch. Did that today on some sort of bin dumping machine at the fish plant, it had suffered through years of abuse at the hands of maintenance folk :laughing:


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## Jlarson (Jun 28, 2009)

That abut sums up most all treatment plants.


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## Fixastang (Sep 4, 2012)

*Bad decisions*



erics37 said:


> Did they buy it used or did it come from the factory with bad parts? Good job fixing it up, though. Nice to tear an old machine down to nothing and start wiring from scratch. Did that today on some sort of bin dumping machine at the fish plant, it had suffered through years of abuse at the hands of maintenance folk :laughing:


They bought the equipment used, but failed to force the original equipment installer to get it working correctly at the time of installation. They basically required him to show the machine would run, which they did by putting the machine in bypass mode. We found a few wiring issues, a bad timing relay and a bad ice cube relay. Otherwise the equipment was wired correctly from the manufacturer.:laughing:


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## erics37 (May 7, 2009)

Fixastang said:


> They bought the equipment used, but failed to force the original equipment installer to get it working correctly at the time of installation. They basically required him to show the machine would run, which they did by putting the machine in bypass mode. We found a few wiring issues, a bad timing relay and a bad ice cube relay. Otherwise the equipment was wired correctly from the manufacturer.:laughing:


Last year I ran a circuit for and hooked up a fancy batching machine made by some company from Iceland. Startup went great, the manufacturer technician came out and initialized the machine, got everything running, testing everything, etc. Literally the NEXT DAY the plant called me up and said their machine isn't working right. After 2 hours of dinking around with it I finally got the maintenance guy to confess that they had tore into it the night before trying to modify some thing or another, and forgot how to put it back together right. In light of that, 3 minutes of troubleshooting found that they had mixed up a couple flow switches with each other and it was screwing things up.

Ugh :laughing:


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## JRaef (Mar 23, 2009)

Fixastang said:


> The WWTP where I work had a lot of equipment upgraded in 1987. One of the main items installed was an Envirex panel for controlling the sludge belt press. It did not work properly without requiring the safety interlocks for the hydraulic pressure, belt skew and belt tension monitors to be bypassed. A co-worker and I were told the panel had been "modified" by several electricians from the moment it was installed to present day. We managed to find the prints and troubleshoot the electrical system while the press was undergoing a major rebuild in February. We found two bad relays and a couple of wires which were in the wrong place. After correcting the issues the belt press now runs in hand and auto with all proper equipment safeties working correctly. The plant manager was astounded by the equipment running properly as he had never seen it run correctly in the 25 years he had been there.:thumbup:


I love a good controls story with a happy ending. :thumbsup:


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