Mystery Generator Shutdowns…
2 John Deere 99KW generators were swapping between running and standby with no alarm. The John Deeres ran Basler Electric controllers interfaced to their ECU’s, providing control and alarm status of the engines. The electric plant was automated by a PLC integrated with relay control, and provided alarm indication to the general alarm system. In this case neither the generators or the electric plant provided any indication as to a monitored fault that would assist an operator in identifying the cause of intermittent switching. Who do you call, the John Deere dealership, or the automated switchboard manufacturer? You call us! We handle and understand plant integration. We isolated the probable cause to one possibility on either side of the generator switchboard interface, and found insufficient grounding of the generator harnesses to be the cause of running generator shutdowns without alarm indication. The result: full electric plant reliability restored, and mystery gone.
Intermittent Hydraulic Pump Shutdown…
A 40 HP motor driving a hydraulic pump for a 75 ton winch would turn off randomly during operation. In this case operators would just hit the start button again, and even multiple times to regain control. We analyzed the system schematics to find possible causes of shutdowns, and then developed a system to monitor the control circuit. Intermittent faults are the hardest to troubleshoot because they are never faulted when you look for them. This was the scenario here. Within 2 days of control circuit monitoring the intermittent fault was identified. There was both an intermittent open and short to neutral on the same circuit. After repair winch reliability was restored. Monitoring continued to ensure that the fault was clear, but here is the issue, operators dealt with this intermittent fault for 5 years because the equipment to figure out what was occurring did not exist until we built it, and the equipment was no longer serviced by the original manufacturer. When that happens who do you call? You call us!