by Staff Writer | Oct 24, 2014 | Control Systems, CSI, Wiring and Electricity
THE MYSTERY One of ACES’ customers manufactures drums and containers for industrial uses. They called us due to an issue with their helium tester, a machine which injects the gas into newly manufactured barrels, seals them and raises them into a vacuum chamber to be...
by Staff Writer | Aug 16, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Wiring and Electricity
THE MYSTERY A correctional facility was having problems with one of their industrial, horizontal-running dryers. The Case of the dead dryer drum. The dryer drum refused to budge. The customer had pressed the reset button with no effect, so they called in the experts...
by Staff Writer | May 10, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Wiring and Electricity
THE MYSTERY A manufacturer of industrial packaging systems such as barrels and drums owned a bead expander that kept faulting. The ACES’ CSI (Control Systems Operator) initially worked with the customer over the phone to identify a bad motion card as the likely...
by Staff Writer | May 3, 2013 | CSI, Municipal Water, Wiring and Electricity
THE MYSTERY There was a power outage at a municipal waste water collection system, which left a lift station dead in the water. The station wouldn’t run on generator power, and once regular power resumed the station wouldn’t come to life in auto or bypass mode either,...
by Staff Writer | Apr 26, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Wiring and Electricity
THE MYSTERY An ACES customer manufactures tortilla chips, using a 30-year-old multi-hopper weigher to measure chips for bagging. The machine was faulting and the customer had worked with factory tech support to troubleshoot it themselves, but after replacing $12,000...
by Staff Writer | Feb 8, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Wiring and Electricity, Yaskawa VFDs
THE MYSTERY A packaging manufacturing company called ACES as one of their paper machines had broken two felts in short order. The felt is a strip that carries the paper pulp, threading it through a long and complex series of rollers to squeeze out the water. The...
by Staff | Feb 1, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Motion Control, Programming
THE MYSTERY A barrel manufacturer called ACES with a problem: The heads that formed the beads of the barrels had started moving inconsistently and roughly enough that when they stopped the whole machine would jerk. Just two years earlier ACES had installed a brand new...
by Staff | Jan 25, 2013 | Control Systems, CSI, Furnaces and Ovens, Motion Control
THE MYSTERY A customer called ACES to the scene of a drop bottom furnace, which was used to fabricate aircraft detail parts and components. Like all drop bottom furnaces this one was equipped with a parts basket that was lowered from the underside of the furnace into...
by Staff | Sep 16, 2012 | Control Systems, CSI, Municipal Water
THE MYSTERY One of ACES’s municipal water customers had an issue with the external display for an ultrasonic sensor, which sits above a tank and measures the liquid level. The unit was displaying a fault and the customer could not get it to reset. THE CLUES One of the...
by Staff | Sep 9, 2012 | Aircraft, Control Systems, CSI, Oil and Gas
THE MYSTERY An aircraft manufacturer was experiencing intermittent problems with one of their fuel tank valves: It would work fine for a while and then randomly give a fail-to-close alarm. THE CLUES The first day the Control Systems Inspector (CSI) visited the plant,...
