Are you a tech hero?

dougw In the dim past I used to work  (job shop) at Huges Sattelite Systems where it did varied tasks like test equipment repair and then I graduated to sustaining engineering. Most of the time was in support of the high-bay where the birds where.

One day somebody complained that their new wiz-bang spectrum analyzer wound not stay on.  Over the course of the week, we played musical analyzer, from the SATE to my lab, tested it, and back again. So after about 5 days, I went outside to the SATE and tried to figure it out. So armed with my Fluke DVM I checked the power in the cabinets, and they all seemed good. So next I checked the 100amp pull-out on the SATE and that was good. I looked over to where it was plugged in and it seemed ok. But when we power it up again, a few minutes later it crashed again. Fed up I took a stroll following the damn power cable which went behind a movable partition and into the wall. About then I heard a faint click from behind the partition. When I got around the partition I was horrified with what I saw.  My STATE power was plugged into the output of a variac as well as a Weller soldering Iron. This whole mess was then plugged into the wall pull-out. Needless to say, I removed my cable from the mess and plugged it into the wall pull-out directly. It never crashed again! later when I was upstairs in my office I noticed my Boss float by. I relayed what had happed, and suggested that we install a lock on all wall pull-out so this would never happen again.

My billing for that little problem was about 30hrs.

ps that paid for the covers which our machine shop built for us.

dougw In the dim past I used to work  (job shop) at Huges Sattelite Systems where it did varied tasks like test equipment repair and then I graduated to sustaining engineering. Most of the time was in support of the high-bay where the birds where.

One day somebody complained that their new wiz-bang spectrum analyzer wound not stay on.  Over the course of the week, we played musical analyzer, from the SATE to my lab, tested it, and back again. So after about 5 days, I went outside to the SATE and tried to figure it out. So armed with my Fluke DVM I checked the power in the cabinets, and they all seemed good. So next I checked the 100amp pull-out on the SATE and that was good. I looked over to where it was plugged in and it seemed ok. But when we power it up again, a few minutes later it crashed again. Fed up I took a stroll following the damn power cable which went behind a movable partition and into the wall. About then I heard a faint click from behind the partition. When I got around the partition I was horrified with what I saw.  My STATE power was plugged into the output of a variac as well as a Weller soldering Iron. This whole mess was then plugged into the wall pull-out. Needless to say, I removed my cable from the mess and plugged it into the wall pull-out directly. It never crashed again! later when I was upstairs in my office I noticed my Boss float by. I relayed what had happed, and suggested that we install a lock on all wall pull-out so this would never happen again.

My billing for that little problem was about 30hrs.

ps that paid for the covers which our machine shop built for us.

A little non-obvious sleuthing and a simple fix saves the day - I hope they showed appreciation.

I am not a fan of AC power problems - I am more into low voltage DC. Lets see …. from the dim past (1986 to be precise) I was installing some big machine exhibits at Expo 86. The power systems on site were a horrible mess - the voltage between the neutral wire and AC ground was 40V and real ground was all over the map. One theatre there blew 40 projectors before they decided to install their own power isolation transformers. My machines were operated by the public, so they had to be protected with GFI breakers - it was a real nightmare trying to figure out how to have them installed so they would perform properly without tripping every few minutes. I didn't get any kudos for that though.

After I had sorted out all my problems I went around looking at what everyone else was doing. One industrial designer was very distraught that her elegant touch screen kiosks were failing every afternoon - they just went totally intermittent working one minute and not the next and back again. Her technical staff could not figure it out, whenever they showed up, the systems worked. I took a close look at the touch screens which turned out to use a fancy optical system for touch sensing (in 1986). I noticed that when a bunch of people were crowding around shading the screen they worked. Anyway I approached her (she didn't know me - I was just some guy wearing construction site attire) and indicated that sunlight was likely saturating the sensors when the sun got to the right angle (in the afternoon) and suggested she install some shade hoods. She was skeptical that it could be that simple but had some nice hoods installed the next day and her kiosks had no further problems. It saved her job, so I let her take all the credit.