Repairing

Example

A manufacturing process dependent on a conveyor system which was controlled by a PLC and servo system. A servo Motor had overheated due to a bad connector causing a single phasing fault. The supply cable had been melted through causing one of the phases to short against a thermistor wire which was fed directly into the PLC system. Subsequently this blew up 2 interface cards and a servo controller, all of which were obsolete. The windings and bearings on the servo motor were also badly damaged. Back in the workshop our engineers reworked the Interface cards, stripped the servo motor which was then rewound and new bearings installed and new connectors fitted. The servo controller was unfortunately beyond repair but all was not lost. We managed to source a replacement from a supplier in Romania which was sent on a 2 day courier. We then removed the memory from the old controller which was intact and installed it in the replacement unit thus restoring full functionality to the customer's machine. All these parts were long obsolete. A solution could have been provided by replacing the parts for new equipment but this would have taken months to plan, write the software and install. It would also have meant replacing the whole PLC system and cost in the region of £60,000.00 The customer was back up and running in 4 days at a cost of £4,500.00 and two years on the machine is still producing.