“Shocking” Info Bites:

• Almost 500 people die each year from electrical accidents, mostly in the workplace, putting it among the top 10 causes of accidental death in the U.S.
• Approximately 80% of all injuries and fatalities caused by electrical accidents are not caused by the electric shock itself, but by the intensive heat, light and pressure blast caused by electrical faults.
• The blast made by vaporizing metallic components can break bones and damage internal organs.

Yes, I shamefully admit it, I HAVE put at least two cell phones into a bag of dry white rice to save them from having taken a swim in a toilet bowl and a swimming pool respectively.

While this may work for the occasional cell phone, it’s not the magic needed for water damaged industrial circuit boards.  Take a look at the photos of this water-damaged Bosch circuit board that arrived at our repair center recently.  Ugh!  Looked like a goner at first sight.

Got a stack of damaged circuit boards gathering dust in your plant?  If so, you are in some good company.

Instead of waiting for someone else to figure out what to do with these, go ahead and grab the bull by the proverbial horns…or rather the circuit board by its electronic components.

There’s likely something useful in that dusty pile of circuit boards, at the very least, scrap value.  Not to mention you will reduce clutter which, in some plants, that alone could make you a hero.

Did you know that more than 70% of  the U.S.  industrial electricity consumption involves motor-driven systems used mostly for pumps, fans, blower systems, and air compression?  That’s a lot of motors and a lot of motor repair needs.

You can avoid motor problems by implementing these simple strategies:

1. Buy the right motor for your application.  Make sure your motor(s) can handle 3.1 times the line voltage at a 0.1 microsecond rise time.  This is not the time to be a penny pincher.
2. Define your parameters .  This avoids overheating in constant-torque applications. At too low a speed, a TEFC motor will overheat.

Did you know that many modern control systems are now designed for a minimum 30-year lifespan?  Hmmm.

Many early systems are still going strong that were installed in the ’90s, ’80s and even some from the 1970s.  But you probably already knew that since so many of you send us your controllers for repairs.

The weaker links in these older systems are the operator terminals, disk drives, power supplies, keyboards, and CRT’s as they often have mechanical or electrical parts that simply wear out.  Many of these units can be repaired and if not, replaced with refurbs or updated, drop-in replacements.

Variable frequency drives for motor driven systems is pretty much a no-brainer what with the energy savings and process improvements.  If you are looking for some beneficial reasons to invest in a VFD take a look at this post I wrote awhile back http://www.acsindustrial.com/blog/industrial-electronic-repair-services/install-a-variable-speed-drive-and-reap-the-rewards/.  If you want to know the story about this bad-a@# drive read on.

Like anything else in your plant, drives can break down like the pictured Fuji drive .  This drive comes out of a facility making turned parts and they are busy…well, they were busy.   This drive has had a number of failures and alarms over the past year and eventually overheated, stalled the machine and melted the drill in the work piece. And as a final insult, when in constant surface speed the drive alarms out under voltage when the spindle accelerates hard.

Every week…no, no, make that every DAY we get interesting items in for repair.  They are causing trouble for the various industrial plants, offices, or wherever they came out of.  This week’s Troublemaker:  a Varian circuit board 03-930210-01.  The defective board (pictured) comes out of a Varian Saturn 2000 MS power suppy  located in a plant in Liechtenstein- problem was, it wasn’t supplying any power causing a hold-up in production.   In case you didn’t know, Liechtenstein is located in central Europe between Austria and Switzerland.

The EPAs NESHAP Rule 6X went into effect in July 2011.  Did you miss the announcement of this rule?  If so, according to The Fabricator.com reports you are not alone.

The rule applies to companies that are primarily engaged (that is 50 percent or more of their total labor) in one or more of the following categories: electrical and electronic equipment finishing, fabricated metal products, fabricated plate work (boiler shops), fabricated structural metal manufacturing, heating equipment (except electric), industrial machinery and equipment finishing, iron and steel forging, primary metal products manufacturing, and valve and pipe fittings.  That describes quite a lot of our customers!

Easy as pie.  Pie in the sky.  4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie.  I just can’t help thinking of all kinds of pie today because yes, it is International Pi day!  As in the irrational and never ending Pi.   For four thousand years we humans have relied on Pi to solve all sorts of things from the simple calculation of the area inside a circle to architectural and engineering challenges.

Plant Engineering has just released the results of their 2012 Salary Survey Analysis which very nicely covers much more than just salary data.  The overall impression from this survey is that American manufacturers are really raring to go and are ready to be done with all things recessionary.

In 2010 Plant Engineers/Managers were growing increasingly concerned with maintenance issues – in fact it was their number one plant concern.  That concern grew even louder in 2011 with survey responders frequently pointing out that their plant was lacking skilled workers, capital, direction from upper management, and funding for maintenance including for maintenance personnel.