18 hours of downtime for the company last night .

[mmcmdl]

Electrician wired up a motor wrong and shut half the plant down for 18 hrs . We the mechanics traced our entire vaccum system from the silos to the hoppers . Swapped out 3 Roots blowers . My boss was with me until Midnight until we gave up the trouble shooting . My coffee pot was never even started . The motor was a 5 horse Baldor running one of our pellet lines which runs the full length of our roof out to our silos . Had to dump silo hatch checking for bridges and clogs . None found . The motor that was originally pulled was wired high voltage which we all visually checked out and verified . The motor that was installed was also a 5 horse Baldor which was also wired high voltage so we took the electricians word as good . When we started up the system , the motor ran the blower and system great , until we put any kind of a small load on the vac system . The motor would stall , tripped the breakers , blew fuses in an instant . They smoked quite a few contactors also in the process . We the mechanics totally disected the entire system and found nothing once again .

This morning when the daylight electrician came in , I took him over to the blower room and showed him what was going on . John , a very talented and smart guy said immediately the motor was wired wrong . In 3 minutes he re-wired it low voltage and the system took off without a hitch . What I learned was to always read the motor plate and not just look at the motor itself . I' not an electrician so that's not my responsibility and I have to trust my co-workers . I did inform my higher ups that the issue was resolved at my morning meeting . They did not seem very happy . I had vacation planned for tonight and Sat night so I don't know the outcome as of yet , but this is not the first instance something of this magnitude has occurred with this electrician . We use contracted electricians as well a company employed . Sad that our contracted ones are so much better . But yes , I am thrilled I took these 2 nights off when I did . The blood pressure would have surely been thru the roof .

 

[matthewsx]

Well deserved time off.

 

[Nutfarmer]

18 hours on down time will cut into management’s bonus. Surprised if the electrician will still have a job.

 

[mmcmdl]

18 hours on down time will cut into management’s bonus. Surprised if the electrician will still have a job.

I would have to agree here . Not only were we down for 18 hours , my point is , my group was told this was top priority for the night . We had 8 hours straight trying to figure this out and found nothing . Meanwhile , the rest of the plant was having their issues as usuall . We could not assist in fixing these issues which caused a snowball effect . It turned into a 14 hr , no break no lunch night . We've been experiencing more and more of these lately .

 

[jwmay]

Sadly, over the last 8 years I've worked with many electricians who were incompetent/dangerous. But if it's anything like my plant, he'll continue to cause problems until he finds someone he can fool into paying him more money to screw their stuff up instead. I know several people I wouldn't trust to change a light bulb move on to higher paying jobs in electrical trades. States need to enforce licensing And testing requirements for anyone hired into this field. As it stands, the Union is the only one testing.

 

[Bi11Hudson]

It seems that when the "bean counters" decided to merge the craft of Electrician and Millwright that any shade tree mechanic could qualify. And a "residential wireman" that had a county license is considered an electrician. The whole problem has been around for at least the last couple or three decades, probably more. Long gone are the days when the electrician could bypass one coil on a 4160 motor to keep it producing power. The problem is the loss of knowledge of how to bypass that one coil. With the advent of computer control of everything, the craft of electrician has become . . . Well, I've been out of the field for 20 odd years. And thankfully don't need to see today's electrician opening a size 1 / 480 V starter looking for the controls of a 4160 motor. That one almost gave me heart failure when the line was still live, just in standby mode with the other two running. A 300 horse motor running on a 480 Volt 20 Amp circuit and you call yourself an electrician?!?!?! With the motor leads open. . . Glad I'm retired out of it.

And it's as much the fault of the state, I suppose. The code requires a master electrician, but not that he be present all the time. Any hayseed that can twist the wires together fits the bill. Just so long as the master is on the payroll.

.

 

[ddickey]

Why didn't management call in an electrician? Oh that's right then they have to pay OT and off shift differential.
Is it a union plant?
They used to tell us to trust but verify. In this instance it may have helped.??

 

[homebrewed]

A number of years back I sent one of our mechanical vacuum pumps out for a rebuild. It took an extraordinarily long time for the rebuild, so when it came back I re-installed it ASAP. The pump was part of a $150K process etcher, and is the backing pump for a TMP (turbo-mechanical pump) -- so it was a high vacuum system, and critical for a lot of our analysis work. When I turned the system on it didn't sound right so I turned it back off, and discovered that the backing pump had PRESSURIZED the tool! The idiot who re-connected the pump motor wired it so it ran backwards.

Fortunately I caught the problem before any damage was done. But never used that rebuilding company again. I also implemented a pre-install checkout that verifies proper pump operation before it's installed in _anything_.

 

[Janderso]

Sadly, over the last 8 years I've worked with many electricians who were incompetent/dangerous. But if it's anything like my plant, he'll continue to cause problems until he finds someone he can fool into paying him more money to screw their stuff up instead. I know several people I wouldn't trust to change a light bulb move on to higher paying jobs in electrical trades. States need to enforce licensing And testing requirements for anyone hired into this field. As it stands, the Union is the only one testing.

I had a mechanic working for us years ago, it got to the point we couldn’t trust him to perform an oil change right.
We fired him.
A local dealer hired him. A couple years later he was their service manager.
Funny how things work out.

 

[homebrewed]

A prime example of the Peter Principle.