Sunday, April 29, 2012

Last spot shoot of the spring

It was perfect weather out for  a shoot. Lots of people showed up and it was  a huge success. Forgot to pack my guns up last night, so I didn't get to shoot after the shoot. They did a lot of work on cowboy town again. They are beefing up the berms and adding distant targets as well. They found a local person that had clean fill he wanted rid of, so the club gets the material free for hauling it away. Works out for everyone. The tree planting went great. A lot of scouts made it out to help as well as members. They had extra trees available for those that wanted them.

Before the shoot, I went to the antique show/flea market at the local 4h center. The flea market area is pretty lousy, but the antique side was awesome. There were two nice size booths with real civil war artifacts. They had pistols, documents, pictures and muskets, along with many other items from the time. It was like going through a museum. Other booths brought back memories seeing items from the sixties and seventies. It was a cool way to spend the morning before the shoot.

Back to work tomorrow. Hopefully the parts arrive for my machine and I can get it put back together again. They don't understand the machine cannot deal with moisture in the air lines. The drier on the air compressor was acting up, so they shut it off. What ever third world country we bought the new compressor from does not have a fan motor for it in the US, so, they have to ship it in from overseas. Apparently, it takes a week to get the motor, and our company lacked the sense to get the extended warranty on the compressor when they bought it, so we don't even get a loaner.The maintenance tech couldn't comprehend the idea of sending motor downtown to have it rewound and reinstall. Usually the place can turn a motor around in a day and it costs a fraction of the price of a new one. When they shut the drier off, the moisture in the air lines found its way in to the linear scales on my ID grinder. Electricity and water do not mix well. The ironic thing is, Fagor automations uses compressed air through it's scales to keep coolant and contamination out. Well, when the geniuses at the plant shut off the drier, the moisture filled the three water separators I installed last time they had drier issues and you could actually see a stream of water running up the clear tubing going to the scales. Needless to say, the machine alarmed out and shut down. One saving grace is, Fagor, unlike most scale manufacturers, make their scales where you can dismantle them and clean the scale thus saving a lot of money. However, when you really soak them, the reader head can short out and need replacement. So far, one reader head is alright, and  one is fried. Still have two axis to check when I can get machine to home out. Reader heads are $850 each. Machine is still on the end of the air line run. This is the second time they have damaged the machine and created massive expense and downtime, but are too busy to have maintenance run an airline from a different area of the line. The end of the air line is where the water always collects, so that is where the geniuses put the most sensitive machine. Only been back to work a couple weeks and it already feels like I never left.

2 comments:

  1. Monkeys.

    We usually have a habit of deadending the line over a trap, and having the trap come out the bottom and the supply come out the top. Thids STILL doesn't do the job the drier is supposed to do.

    Edgetech makes an inline compressed air humidity monitor, and you can just mount it in a tee in the incoming air line

    http://www.edgetech.com/moisture-humidity/gallery/item/6740-series-compressed-air-transmitters

    It's easy to install and can be mounted in the 'Feed hold" circuit of the machine so it can't be started if the moisture is too high.

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  2. Thanks for the link and info Og. I have never seen the water that bad. I have three moisture seperator filters in line along with an auto purge that drains into a tank. It filled all three filters, overran the one with the auto dump valve, and filled two of the four scales on the machine. I will print out the info on the edgetech transmitter and run it by the boss. I replumbed the airlines taking the machine off the end of the run and putting it in a part of the circuit that has stayed dry. THey have been running without a dryer for a week. Should be fun getting all the fluid out of the system when the part finally comes in. They say the donkey pulling the cart should be arriving with the part tomorrow. I lost the argument of just having the original motor rewound at the motor place down town. THey usually do an extremely quick turn around and beat the price of a new one by far. I did manage to get the scales put back togeather and installed. I really like the Fagor scales. Most of the machines I work on have Heidenhain scales which are expensive, sealed and throwaway.Never seen one you can clean yourself.THe tech support is very helpful and walks you through it well. Thanks again for the input.

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