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Monday, November 26, 2012

Its Dead Jim!
















































It was a mercy killing though.  Oddly enough about this time of year in 1991 this Reliance Electric PLC was being commissioned

So now my direct reports, subordinates, human resources, my crew and I are under a 3 week schedule for replacing it.  I admit a tinge of sadness when the power was cut about 9:45 this morning.  The thing worked 24/7 with only two big time failures. In 20+ years. 

You KNOW you work with geeks when my lead tech is standing at the breaker on the UPS feed and says: "I am a Reliance Electric Automate 30E. My teacher taught me a song, would you like to hear it ?"  I said "sure HAL" and the breaker was cut. 

In the mean time I get a call and someone says the bulk tank readings "don't look right".



Big honking red light is NOT good on the front of this thing.  It went from "plays well with others to kicking and screaming at everyone". 

It has decided to not talk to these anymore. 




  











Not only these but uh 10 other devices as well.  What do these do?  Shoot an ultrasonic pulse from the top of storage tanks holding liquid and report out the volume in them in gallons. We have over 100 storage tanks and its a big deal if people cannot see what was consumed or what is in them in real time. 

Sigh....


Blogging will probably be light over the next several weeks! 


19 comments:

  1. I hate when things go Tango Uniform. Do what's needful, and we'll be here when you have time to play again.

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    1. Thanks Shepard. I will try to keep everyone up to date on this one.

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  2. Been there also. There is never a good time for these things to happen, but if It is possible to pick an even worse time, it always will choose then to fail.

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    1. Production has pushed back our start date for several months. We actually got to make the statement that if it fails we start then. Pick one date.

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  3. Kelly . . . .? Kelly . . . .? What are you doing Kelly??? Daaaaaasssssiiiiiiiyyyyyyyyy . . . . .Daaaaaaassssssiiiiiiiyyyyyyy . . . . . give me your answer true . . . . . .

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    1. You beat me to it Bill. I was going to go on about: "My mind is slipping Kelly, I can feel it."

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    2. Good call guys! No stress pills around when you need 'em either!

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  4. End of an era.......

    I remember when the Texas Instruments 5TI was hot stuff, along with Westinghouse Numa-Logic.

    The last time I worked on any of that stuff was a Sylvania system programmed in SYBIL....Sylvania Basic Industrial Language.

    And our "Development System" a NorthStar computer!

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  5. Scary question, but was there perhaps a signal going through or from the Reliance PLC to the Allen Bradley that provided some important information? If the failure on the Allen-Bradley was simultaneous, it seems a bit fishy. Did an interlock get lost somewhere? Even just a simple one, like the Reliance PLC is powered on?

    Or was it just a case that the Allen-Bradley just went poof coincidentally on the same day?

    When it rains it pours.

    You have my prayers that it gets sorted as quickly and easily as possible.

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    1. Good observation Mrs. S. One I would make too except that the systems are totally isolated from one another. Devicenet was not a factor way back then. Nor Ethernet!

      Thanks for the well wishes!

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  6. Yep, there's gonna be some work in your future... And concur with Mrs. S, did somebody, somewhere do a re-route or is there a 'lost' interface??? I agree that doesn't sound like coincidink... :-)

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    1. See above NFO. Totally isolated systems. Seems to be a coincidink!

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  7. Replies
    1. Nah, not really PH! I always say to myself if I am so smart, why am I here? LOL!

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  8. Well that sucks... Totally unknown faults are NOT fun...

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  9. Dood! First thing I did at my plant was have all the ultrasonic level transmitters yanked and replaced with pressure-driven level transmitters.
    Those things suck. I haven't met one yet that I didn't want to throw away.

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    1. You might like the Siemens jobs out now. Old Milltronics units and Siemens bought them. 95 percent of them went in without a hitch. The other 5 percent had to have a echo Jedi tweak them. That was several years ago and we have not had a problem!

      We have a bad habit of putting different materials with varying specific gravities in the same tank. Some have inert gas blanketing, some materials will set up hard as concrete if they get below a certain temp. If we went DP Xmitters, all my guys would be doing is recalibrating them until they retired.

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