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 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 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 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 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 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 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…
An aircraft parts manufacturer had an aluminum heat treat oven that wasn’t meeting its surveys. The customer surmised that what the oven needed was more airflow, and they called ACES to make the adjustment.THE CLUES The fan was running 500 rpm, and being…
One of ACES’ customers closed their factory in Utah and moved all of the equipment to Kansas in order to set up a line manufacturing synthetic twine. The system included a PLC processor and six DC variable speed drives (VSDs) and their attendant DC motors…
THE MYSTERY A company that manufactures polymers and synthetic fibers had an old Control Techniques VFD that needed replacing due to environmental conditions.THE CLUES When the ACES Control Systems Investigator (CSI) arrived on the scene, he discovered that the...
