One of ACES customers is a fine food producer with 20 facilities across the US and Mexico. One of the ovens they used for final processing had always been finicky and difficult to start, with a startup routine of 12 seconds, so they asked ACES to modify…
CSI
The Case of the Shifting Serial Numbers
ACES routinely maintains a legacy oven at an aircraft plant that is used to cure composite parts for long periods at relatively low temperatures. Recently the customer had been having issues with identifying serial numbers for aircraft parts, which were…
The Case of the Stubborn LACT Station
A purchaser and transporter of crude oil products contacted ACES with a challenge relating to one of their LACT stations. A LACT unit (Lease Account Custody Transfer) is the critical control system in an oil pumping station, which measures and regulates…
The Case of the Whistling Generator Tubes
The customer had issues with two of their Once Through Steam Generators (OTSG). They called ACES to the scene of a large biodiesel production facility. Feedwater and heated air pass through a bank of steel tubes and combine to create high-quality steam….
The Case of the Overheating Drum Welder
THE MYSTERY An ACES’ CSI (Control Systems Investigator) was called to the scene of an overheating side-seam drum welder. This is a primary machine for this customer, a barrel manufacturer. Its job is to take a flat piece of metal, roll it into a hoop and weld it down…
The Case of the Glitchy Helium Tester
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…
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…
