The summer is almost over and we have been busy.
In April I attended The Atlanta Wire show, this event is held every two years and I saw a lot of familiar faces in Atlanta. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of evenings with some people whom I had not seen for many years. Time does fly when you work in this industry. Interwire is held at the Georgia Congress center and takes about two days to see and meet everyone.
In May Rewire Automation was awarded a retrofit for a Southern company that will be commissioned early fall of 2013. The high lights will be the new Prolinx Radios RLX2’s, Controllogix Thermocouple cards. In the past we have used thermocouples to monitor extremely expensive bearings. This allowed the maintenance to judge if the bearings needed greasing or not. This retrofit was completely assembled and tested in our Toronto, Ontario Facility and then shipped to the customers site for installation.
In April we received a disturbing phone call a long time client came across a Vector drive that had no running fans. This led to a further investigation as to the reliability of those fans. Our conclusion is they will last about 4000 hours and then there will be issues such as seizing and burning out. Replacement is probably the best proactive solution, that is every 3-4 years replace those drive fans. A drive that receives no cooling will eventually have issues that could be extremely costly. Scrambling to find a new drive over a $ 5.00 fan is not the reason why people are in business.
For those whom question our ability and are perhaps being told otherwise Rewire Automation was formed in 2000 for the sole purpose to work with various customers in North America. Working for 1 customer was not going to work for us. We needed Diversity and we found it working with various customers. Rewire Automation is a system integrator that is able to do it all. We prefer to work with your electricians and controls people.
In 2010 we worked with a large cable manufacturer and rebuilt a Cable Server Line. I was on site for about two months and designed and commissioned the machine for them. The Cable manufacturer supplied the hands and the materials. The rebuild was a major success for all involved as everyone felt they were part of the upgrade. By involving the personnel in the rebuild they had a plan and Rewire executed this. We quoted all materials and were not privie to knowing the competitive quotes and won 80% of these quotes. This included AC and DC drives, Main Breaker and mechanisms, PLC materials. We used local talent to install the machine and added the safety system to the controls, making this server line one of the safest in the industry. Not bad for a line that runs at 200 revolutions per minute. Of course other features were also added to the line but due to confidentiality we cannot discuss this.