Electrical Troubleshooting Offer to Help

DMS General
#1

ISSUE or REQUEST:

Affected Tool or Resource:

Committee, Group or Volunteer who usually handles this type of ISSUE or REQUEST (Please tag using the @ symbol. A list of current groups that can be “mentioned” is maintained at this LINK.):

Details of ISSUE or REQUEST (Please be as specific as possible):

PLEASE REMEMBER DALLAS MAKERSPACE IS AN ALL VOLUNTARY RUN COMMUNITY.
Our volunteers will handle the reported issues as quickly as possible; however, there is no guaranteed time frame for resolution - due to the voluntary nature of how things work around here.

Please consider volunteering to help maintain some of our resources to help keep things running as smooth as possible here! Thanks!


:bulb: **If you are reporting or resolving an equipment issue, please also update the [tool status board](https://dallasmakerspace.org/cgi-bin/toolstatus.cgi) appropriately.**

One of the threads I read today mentioned a lack of anyone to perform electrical troubleshooting. I have some experience with this:
20 years instrumentation and control in the nuclear plant on U.S. Navy submarines
5 years electrical generating station
20 years industrial motors and controls troubleshooting
If you feel I could be of help, feel free to contact me. I will help as I can. May take a few days - for some reason my boss wanted his company truck back when I retired in April (so only one shared car)!

Please note I don’t do residential electrical - too much messed up wiring in homes from people thinking they understood electrical systems and wiring.


:warning: **NOTE**: This category is **NOT** for discussion threads. Any "discussion" will be split out by one of the TALK Moderators to create a separate "discussion thread".
1 Like
#2

@cdavis714 You may want to repost your message into the DMS General topic instead of posting it as a issue ticket.

#3

I moved this to general.

Hi Charles,
I’m guessing you are talking about my post here.

I mentioned this as an example to the other member in the discussion. I don’t believe we are currently having any electrical issues. It has just been one of those more difficult topics to handle in the past. Thank you for your offer and I hope those that may need the help in the future take note.

#5

Preferably a Tokamak fusion reactor. As long as there a NO adverts!!!

#6

With enough smoke detectors and a large van de graph we could build a breeder reactor and turn DMS into a superfund site.

3 Likes
#7

I could help with that, but don’t forget the line from Top Gun: “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
I think that’s the right quote. :joy:

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#9

Oddly it wasn’t the beryllium mentioned in the story, nor radiation that killed him, but most of us wouldn’t survive a 0.404BAC either.

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#10

@kbraby we have a metal casting machine at DMS that would benefit from your expertise.

The machine belongs to the @Team_Jewelry Chairperson is @nausser915.

My suspicion is the battery in the PLC has died and according to the manufacturer, a dead battery means the PLC is toast.

One thought, if the PLC is shot, is to convert it over to a computer-controlled system, ala Arduino. @artg_dms - thoughts?

I believe @TBJK and @jphelps tried to fire it.

I’ll be at DMS for classes tonight and tomorrow afternoon, if you, or anyone, would like to meet and discuss.

Oh, there is a manual for a newer-model machine with the machine that may be of some help.

$36 Metal Casting Machine - now what?

#13

Not sure if you intended to tag me, or @cdavis714, but if PLC can’t be revived by changing the battery, do we know how many, and what types of inputs and outputs are needed? And what the control logic should look like?

#14

How many smoke detectors?

#15

@cdavis714, yourself and anyone that might be interested in troubleshooting this machine is welcome to help! I don’t believe anyone has got as far as looking at inputs, outputs and logic, but I’d suspect something on the lines of PID temperature contoller, motor on/off/timer (the newer models have computer-controlled acceleration and decceleration), water flow on/off.

#16

From the story he used hundreds. But we could use a few dozen old fashioned coleman gas mantles

#17

Silly me. I tried to carry a bunch of stone in my yard and injured my back again. Won’t be able to come to DMS for awhile.

I blew up the picture on the referenced thread. The PLC is a Mitsubishi FXon-24MR. This has 14 inputs and 10 outputs. According to one of the manuals I found online, the PROGRAM is stored on EEPROM and will only be lost if the PLC is fried. Some of the current state information is backed up by the battery and will be lost when power is removed. It does not look like the battery is replaceable, as is the case with some of these micro-PLCs. The only way to replace the battery is to replace the entire PLC.

I don’t have the software to program Mitsubishi PLCs. Last time I checked, I think it was about $3000 for the software. If we can find some one who has the software and is willing to copy and print out the program, we could replace the PLC (if needed) with any of several other brands. This PLC has been obsolete for a long time. You can still find used ones that work on the internet.

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#19

Is the EEPROM a separate chip or part of a microcontroller. If it’s a separate chip then the EEPROM could be removed and read and the contents written to the EEPROM on a new board.

The battery is described as non-replacable. Does this mean that it’s soldered down? Or is the unit sealed such that breaching the seal trashes the board? If it’s not sealed then it would seem that a suitable replacement could be found. Of course any state info in RAM is lost, as stated previously.

Any schematics for this unit?

1 Like
#20

Please hold off on anything that could cause damage to the PLC. If we do anything to prevent getting the program out first, we could have a major problem. I have had to recreate programs after a PLC was fried. It takes a HUGE amount of time to write the program and often never achieves the fine level of control the original program had.

At this point, we don’t know if there is a problem with the PLC at all (other than perhaps a dead battery). Until we can try operating the machine and see what, if anything, the PLC is doing and not doing, we don’t know if this is a PLC problem or not. In the real world, if the PLC powers up and indicates it is running the program, 99% of the time the PLC is not the problem. Usually if it looks like a PLC problem, it is not receiving an input signal or an output device is not responding to the PLC.

#21

We did try and run the machine with results in another thread if that helps. It’s easy to wheel it over to machine shop and plug it into the bandsaw power drop. There is 120v there as well for the water pump. I loaned a sturdy 27 gallon container and sometime else a pump. Edit: Also an air line connection.

#22

You’re one up on me. I only did that for about 4 years. Say hello sometime if you see me wearing a Navy shirt.