Blog
The Case of the Dead Dryer Drum
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…
The Case of the Crashing Bead Expander
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…
The Case of the Dead Lift Station
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,…
The Case of the Fault-Heavy Weigher
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…
The Case of the Ripped-Up Paper Machine
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…
The Case of the Jerky Barrel Heads
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…
The Case of the Plummeting Drop Bottom Furnace
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…
The Case of the Non-Sensing Sensor
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…
The Case of the Random Fuel Tank Valve
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…
The Case of the Shorted-Out Exhaust Fan
THE MYSTERY A municipal water customer was having an issue with the exhaust fan on one of their lift stations: When they flipped the switch to start the fan manually, it tripped two breakers. They called an ACES Control Systems Inspector (CSI) to the scene to…