#@!* Stratum

[Jubilee]

Our Stratum is not behaving.

When I first got here, we had a lot of issues with the coater. Pits, Runs, etc. Took it a part, cleaned filters, nozzles, tanks, etc, and it went from a 50% rework rate to about 10. Given where we came from.. I was relatively happy.

Til last week.


Last Wednesday, the coater began to turn itself off every time the cure cycle would kick on. Cheapest (but still $$) thing to try was replacing our bulb (which was about 3months old) and pray to the lab gods that it was a bad bulb. Tech agreed.

Which seemed to be the case.. till today. It is doing it again.

Which then seems to point towards a power issue. Whether it is in the machine.. or potentially building is the concern now. There are some signs that we may have a building issue due to the number of electical/computer things we have replaced over the past year.. in all brand new equipment. We also have a fish tank that is supposed to have a multi-color light show.. that does get reset to just clear quite frequently which would happen if it ever lost power..So there is an argument to be made for having an electrician come out.

However, I am also well aware of what that can do to a machine. With this being our second blown bulb in a week.. it leads me to wonder if there is an issue with the machine itself.

If you were a young start up that no longer was under your 1yr warranty period... would you pay to have a tech come out to check the machine out, install some line conditioners and monitor the situation? Call an electrician to have them test? Would you still want the tech to come if your past experience was that they didn't have a clue and just changed parts to see if things might get better? Any other ideas or suggestions?

[sharpstick777]

I have terrible eletrical conditions where I live. We often look a volts, but machines need amps. You can buy a line tester at the HW store. But look for the amps under full normal load first. If they are not enough, you will need an electrician to install a new line.

If the amps are enough, I have to put power conditioners on all my equipment because of signwave issues still. Power conditioners cost a fortune, so test your line before you buy one. A good electrician can tell whether your power is dirty or not.

[Jubilee]

THanks. The more I think about it, I do believe it is a dirty power issue.

I have had several problems with my shredder, and the outlet needing reset. Then while at dinner last night, my husband joked about construction.. and it hit me.

The McDonald's that is right next to our little industrial park is remodeling while staying open. They just installed additional drive through lanes, and new signage. That might be putting enough pressure on the power grid to cause our sudden increase in problems. Question is will it improve once construction is done.

[fjpod]

THanks. The more I think about it, I do believe it is a dirty power issue.

I have had several problems with my shredder, and the outlet needing reset. Then while at dinner last night, my husband joked about construction.. and it hit me.

The McDonald's that is right next to our little industrial park is remodeling while staying open. They just installed additional drive through lanes, and new signage. That might be putting enough pressure on the power grid to cause our sudden increase in problems. Question is will it improve once construction is done.

mmmmmmmmmmmm....unlikely.

[MikeAurelius]

Actually, call your power company and ask them to put a load meter on the lines coming into your building. They will do this for free, and will save you the expense of having an electrician come out and tell you the same thing.

It will then be the power company's responsibility to resolve any issues it finds.

Now, that said, 20 years ago, before we could get 3 phase power into our building, we had a rotary phase converter for several of our machines. These machines ran very well, but throughout the building, we would burn out a single phase motor on the average of 1 every 6 months (we had approximately 30 such motors running during work hours, every 6 months one would die). We went through a large number of 8' florescent bulbs.

When 3 phase power was available from the pole, we immediately changed over, and we have not had a single motor burn out in over 10 years, and only lose a florescent bulb when its at the end of its service life. Turned out the rotary phase converter was sending spikes back through the single phase lines.

If I were you, I'd ensure that you have UPS's on all of your computers (and keep the batteries fresh and up to date), and use line conditioners on any 120 Volt computer operated machines (like edgers).

Once the power company has signed off on the incoming lines, have an electrician come in and look over your installation. You may need to have some lines split off onto new circuits.

Good luck!

[PRECISIONLAB]

Does the entire machine turn off or the UV lamp fails to fire?

[Jubilee]

The entire machine was turning off.

Last time replacing the bulb fixed it, this time it did not. The tech over the phone was concerned that our coater may not be getting enough power. The idea was that we would have a "booster" box installed.

However the electrician was not keen on doing this since the plate on the coater states it is rated for 208. We are getting 213. Now the powers that be at Coburn state that we want 225, and if we had loaded up the manual on the computer and shown this to the electrician, we would have been good. *roll eyes*

The electrician did take a look at our coater and saw where the connectors leading into the circuit breaker was bad. Fortunately we did have a replacement set along with breaker.. and was able to replace it all and get up and rolling. However.. it seems we need to install a surge protection/power cleaning system :/

It was also interesting to hear that last year after blowing a board on the blocker, they had a booster box installed on one of the circuits. Of Course it isn't the same one that the coater is on.. but it did make me question why they didn't forsee this being an issue across the board. Guess I should chalk that up to another "darn it if I was only here when we started!" scenarios..