Day 125

Morning
I worked on finishing up my last unfinished projects. Dean grabbed me for a talk from Olsson controls. It wasn't anything really new, but I had a good talk with Dean on the walk over. I wrote up a document for the Tobin bench when I got back. I then backed up all my files for Tony. Matt invited me out to lunch at Humpties; he even said he'd buy!

Afternoon
Not much got done. I chatted with Tony about Mecop, hit up the electric shop, had a sendoff in the conference room with cake. Dean had a few good quips, but it went well. I had a few talks with Tobin, then bs'ed with Tony and Chris until now.

Day 124

Morning
Tobin test bench. I went over to try to troubleshoot that thing. I started by using hard jumpers and low tip limits, but the DC trip was still strange, and the AC trip never worked. It was very odd. I ended up putting another trigger board in and trying again, but the results were identical. I never figured it out, and I also never got the toggle switch to work. It was a little frustrating, but I did get the hold switch installed and a few more things labeled. I also did the troubleshooting. I left Ray a present on the door.

Afternoon
I tried to make up some drawings for the panel. I got the control power one done, and a crude layout as well. I'll finish those up tomorrow morning so there is a record of the bench. I also need to draft a paper. There was a safety drill. They sounded all the horns and everyone assembled.

Day 123

Morning
I got started by gathering everything I need for across the street. I made some labels with Dean's label maker, laminated a sheet with all the P1223 TRG information, got together all the tools, soldered female header jumpers onto the signal wire, and grabbed my documents. I went over there and started the wiring. I pulled the two new cables, labeled, and swapped out resistors. The only problem is the switch didn't work. The DC trip just keeps going off. I ran out of time in the morning, so I'll have to troubleshoot later.

Afternoon
Tony was over here, so we just got started on the Mecop basic knowledge review. I had a good idea on most of the items, but he brought up good points with things like input impedance (0-10VDC signals should have high impedance, 4-20 mA should have low impedance, etc.) and sizing (NEC code book). I was able to answer a number of questions fairly well, but I still learned a lot. I started the drawings for the test bench rather than go back over for just a half hour.

Day 122

Morning
I got to work cleaning out my last project folder: the welder project. It wasn't too bad really. I found some old emails that I printed for inclusion. It was good to go back trough and take a look at everything. That really completes my folders. They should all be clean now. Nothing much was going on over here, so I went across the street and rewired the test bench. The resistor that was already mounted was a 10k (not 5k), so I need to make a small update, but the wiring itself is solid.

Afternoon
I ran back over and drilled out a hole for the second pot. The battery was dying in the drill (and it just took me a while), so I was late back over here for my exit interview with Corey. When we finally got over there, he didn't even know we were meeting. It was all good on the forms, nothing bad or underrated. We came back over and I sketched a few drawings for the bench before quiting.

Day 121

Morning
I did a little work on the choke research. I made sure that my document was up to snuff, then I cleaned out the project folder that I had. It got moved, but into an incomplete folder just because we never really did much with it. The research was nice, but I don't know if the solutions will work at all.

Afternoon
I went across the street twice and worked on the test bench. I got all the necessary wire and resistors that I need for the modifications. When I tried to get it wired in, I ran into some problems. There must be a better way to add resistance between terminal strips. I might just suck at it too, but something needs to happen because that just won't work the way I have it. The voltage level for the analog trip is working though.

Day 120

Morning
I came in and got to work on the Tobin test bench. I asked Tony about the analog trip setting, which prompted a long examination of the board and the input signals. I think what we determined was that we should just use one channel (phase) to trip the board and you may need to multiply by 3^(1/2) for a correction factor. I also muddled around my desk a little and cleaned up a few small things on projects. I got a call in from Frank Susnik that my drawings are approved, so I got Tony and Matt to sign off so they can get into the system.

Afternoon
The entire afternoon was spent up in plant engineering talking with Frank Davis about the old bliss press project. I actually contributed a small amount when it came to the panel because I had been involved with the previous discussion some months ago. I didn't really say too much, but I did observe and learn some. When we got back (Dean included), I emailed off the final prints and called it a week.

Day 119

Morning
I got started by heading across the street to work on Tobin's bench. I tried to wire up the scr's to match the ones on ebw4, but that didn't get the 480 heater on. I tried a bunch of different things, but no dice. The wiring all looked good, and the board was even firing correctly (based on led indication), but the scr's were not being triggered. I came back across the street to grab the o-scope close to 11:00 when the monthly engineering meeting was. It was mostly covering projects.

Afternoon
I looked up the scr datasheet, along with the datasheet for 4ebw. The information showed that I needed to be more careful of how I was hooking up the scr's. I spent a lot of time tracing the leads until it was all ready to go. I needed to make a few changes across the street, but once the final wiring was done, presto! The heater came on and I got 480 output. It was adjustable with the pot and everything. The next step is to get all the trips to work. I need to grab some more wire and work out how I am going to lay it out, but I think I can get it done.

Day 118

Morning
After a discussion about the big down time on EBW7 during the night, I followed Tony across the street to work on S7. Rich was melting away, so Tony tried to tune in his boards for him. Rich was giving some good tidbits on the furnace and beam patterns. Near the end, he was trying to run a gun for Tony, and he accidentally dropped the stub into the pot. He fixed it, but it was funny. We then cleaned up the work area a little. We ripped down a box and got some din rail out of it.

Afternoon
I went over to work on Tobin's test bench. The boards were all in place, but the trigger board didn't have any of the inputs tied to it. I rewired it, but I was unsure of the scr's. I ran back over to see EBW 4, and sure enough, the scr was wired wrong. I went back and fixed the problem. I tried to fire it up with a heater for a load, but no dice. I didn't bring the right meter, so I didn't have much to check, but I did verify that the fuses were okay. I need to trouble shoot tomorrow to get it working. Tobin will get a kick out of it.

Day 117

Morning
Startup this morning. No big issues at the meeting. Tobin got introduced as the new lead maintenance man. I approved my Mecop final report online, but then Tony had to cancel because he was running around the cell all day. I went to town on the beam pattern document. As soon as that got finished, I started cleaning out project folders. I had the beam pattern on done by lunch.

Afternoon
I continued to work on folders. I got the S8 folder done along with some small projects. I then started to clean off my desk. I didn't realize how much stuff had accumulated in it. I used the upper drawer to store my stuff, then put everything else back into its proper place. Almost everything is spic-and-span now. I took a look at the welder project folder and cleaned up the welder information, but I still need to tackle the actual project folder.

Day 116

Labor day holiday.

Day 115

Morning
Today was the big Mecop final presentation. I started off the six of us with a pretty decent presentation. I didn't have any trouble with anything, so I was pretty satisfied. There weren't too many questions either. Lynn Davis gave a small speech after, and we got a free breakfast. I went back to the office and continued to work on the beam pattern document. I was trying to update all of the information on what I had done on S9.

Afternoon
There was an SI-08 on the cell at 1:00. Wally came over and we walked through it all. There weren't too many issues or concerns. After that, Tony did a pretty good job of leaving to go camping. I worked on some small items and uploaded my documents to Mecop. Tobin was trying to get onto the HPM plc, but we couldn't get connected. He told me later that we were using the wrong connection driver. At 3:30 it was time for Mecop business.

Day 114

Morning
I spent some time perfecting and practicing my presentation for tomorrow morning. I updated the company history on the school version, and Tony got the okay from Matt to send it out. I then started to work on the written document. I finished up the executive summary by lunch.

Afternoon
I finished the conclusion section of the written report. I then added the few missing pieces that are required and put it into one doc. I printed it and put it on Tony's desk for review. I also practiced my presentation another time. I had to do it in the office with the door closed, which is a little strange.

Day 113

Morning
I finalized the stirring coil drawings finally. Jim got me the updates while I was back east, so I made those small improvements and moved them from the old style to the new style of dwg file. Once I checked them myself, I mailed them off to Frank Susnik for plant engineering approval. I then pulled out my mecop required documents to work on.

Afternoon
I spent the entire afternoon working on the mecop paper and looking at my mecop presentation for Corey. He emailed me a few questions (wanted hard numbers), so I investigated each one to get a better understanding. I'm going to put those points on a note card rather than put them in the slide. The numbers aren't fabricated, but it is hard to explain why we need to look at improving the chokes, or why beam patterns are needed in a furnace.

Day 112

Morning
I came in and took a look at my power point for Corey. I made sure it all worked on the public folder. The furnace meeting spilled over a little. Tony needed to explain the old-bliss project to the new plant engineer, then the meeting took about two hours. Rich commented to me about the beam patterns that he wanted and that I could easily make.

Afternoon
I worked on my board some more. I attempted to short the load with a 2 ohm load of power resistors, but my implementation is pretty weak. I need to come up with a better system that will actually short the load rather than always be in a short situation. Then I need to record voltage levels. I went over to S7 to watch the beam sweep, and we stopped at the visitor center to get a contract for the Zr cell project.

Day 111

Morning
Lane had all the Mecop's come down to the visitor center for lean training. He had a presentation and a demo for us to run through with him to better explain lean. It was really helpful to get some of the reasoning behind the continuous improvement department. The simulation was us working at a paper airplane factory. When we made lean improvements there were large improvements in the output and quality of the planes. It was rigged to come out that way, but a lot of the ideas make sense.

Afternoon
I came back to the office and took a look at the work I had left. Since my scr's got in from Newark, I started to work on that board. I pulled the old scr, but the new one still wouldn't trigger. I found that the gate current was way too low. More current triggered the scr and got the board working. I wired in a switch to control the triggering, but I still need to put in the short. I am thinking of two bus bars that can be shorted with any piece of metal. We shall see how it works.

Day 110

Vacation

Day 109

Vacation

Day 108

Vacation

Day 107

Vacation

Day 106

Vacation

Day 105

Morning
I worked on the required Mecop documents. I've got to have a power point and a written document to them in two weeks (I found out yesterday via email). I managed to modify my presentation and get it to Matt for approval, but the written document will take a little bit more time because I have to describe each of my projects in 5-10 pages.

Afternoon
I took a look at 1 Arc because Chris hit water on his Friday melts. It wasn't much to see, just some water on the floor and a big scorched hole in the crucible about the size of a screw hole. I wrote a little bit more, then had a project review with Tony. Everything is going well.

Day 104

Morning
I worked on my choke documentation. I added the simulation results and the experimental setup. My parts from Newark were out of stock, so I found a few replacements and gave those to Tony. Nearly the entire morning was spent updating that document so all my work will be clear when I'm gone. I also ran more Spice simulations on the circuit, using a switch instead of an scr so the model would be ideal. It works really well if I can get the scr to function properly. That's proving to be very difficult.

Afternoon
I wrapped up some more simulations and add pictures to the document. I printed it out and went through it for errors. I didn't do much more than sit at my desk and be a bum this afternoon.

Day 103

Morning
I came in and got to work on the coke demo board. I got all the components I was going to need, then I went to town on soldering them in place. No real issues came up during this process. I went to the electric shop and grabbed a screw for the heat sink, a Square D push button, and a length of wire. I had the board ready to go by lunch time.

Afternoon
The board was not working. Everything should have been fine, but the SCR was not triggered. I should have been seeing a fair amount of voltage (~10 volts) over the load resistor, but it was all over the SCR instead. It appeared that it wasn't being triggered even though everything was right on the board. I kept trying to fire the SCR with no luck. Finally I put in the other SCR IC to check, and the board still didn't work. Something must be wrong conceptually with this setup. I am not really sure what it could be, but I am thinking about it. I looked up some part numbers for different SCR's from Newark.

Day 102

Morning
When I got in this morning, there was a big tub of parts on my chair. Tony's RadioShack part bin was huge. I found power resistors, chokes, diodes, led's, and an SCR in them. It looked like everything that I would need to make a simulation. I went down to the instrument shop after the S11 meeting to get a capacitor for the power supply. I also checked in the pig shed for some, but the only things I could find rated at such a high voltage were about 1mF. I decided to go with a power supply in his tub, which still works and I tuned to 12VDC.

Afternoon
I walked over to the health center, but they were unable to take a look at my ear. It's almost better now anyway, so I'm not too worried. I got back and polished my presentation before heading off for separations. It took a while to get started and go through the other presentations, but they were cool. It was good to see what everyone else had been doing during the summer. My video's didn't work, but I was able to show them because they're on the T drive. The tour of separations is interesting because that place is so wild. All the chemical refinement is much different than over here.

Day 101

Morning
Today was all about S9 and beam patterns. I got across the street early to hop on while they are running. Dennis was just burning off some fingerprints, so I got to play with Gun1. I was able to get the beam patterns working on the first shot. They all worked right off, so I gave Tony a call and he came over. They were working really well. We came back over to melting where I grabbed the camera. I took some video back on S9. I got back to the office and took all the videos off. They look okay, but they're not professional quality or anything.

Afternoon
I showed Tony the videos, then emailed Ken Hansen, Rich, and Tim with the results. Tony and I went over my Mecop presentation, after which I added some video to it. It should go very well, especially with all the graphic aides. I then worked on the choke problem. We figured it would be impractical to buy a big scr to try right out of the box, so I suggested a small scale circuit for testing. I looked up some parts at Newark, and Tony said he would bring in his big box of stuff from the Petersburg RadioShack.

Day 100

Morning
There was a meeting with Phil for the furnace team to present their budget. Phil had already seen the bottom line number before the meeting started, so he didn't carry on too much about that. He asked a number of questions about the design that were focused on a goal he had in mind (like melting a certain product type in this furnace). Overall, the meeting went fine.

Afternoon
I looked for high voltage thyristors. I found a few good ones from ABB. We might be able to series a few together to use on the high voltage choke. I went to a tour of Tyco Electronics up in Wilsonville today. They make really fine coax cable. It was interesting to see their plant and processes, but it wasn't an EE's paradise. There was very little for an electrical to do there. Maybe it's not the best place for me, but it was good to see another plant.

Day 99

Morning
It was finally time to hit up S9. I got the maintenance laptop after the morning meeting and he headed across the street. I got connected to the plc after a few ethernet hick ups, then started to add the beam patterns. I couldn't get anything on the screen to show up, which was frustrating for me. I eventually found that there is a special ladder just for the WonderWare interface. Once I catered to that, I started seeing the circle on the screen. I toggled everything off, then headed back over here for the monthly engineering meeting in Matt's office.

Afternoon
After getting back from lunch, I took a look at the S9 stuff again. I went back over to work on the improvements to the logic that I wanted while Dennis was cleaning, rather than making Tony stand around later. Dennis wanted a lot of little things changed with the joysticks. I made all the updates that he requested (directions being backwards mostly), then had him check them before I left. I came back and chatted with Tony/Dean for a few minutes before the end of the day.

Day 98

Morning
Back to work. I took some snapshots of the welding floor for my power point. I continued to work on the inductor choke results document when I got some motivation to simulate some more. I spent a good time working with sub-circuits and LT spice to get a working model of an scr. This was actually a much bigger pain than it sounds. I also found some downtime on S9 tomorrow morning.

Afternoon
Tony gave me a little teaser with the short detection circuit. It has a time delay effect due to a capacitor in parallel with the relay coil. After I saw that, I started to tinker with the choke circuit. The idea of putting an scr in should work. There was a meeting with an accountant at 3:00 that Tony invited me to. He tried to help out with classifying things for ROI's, etc. Afterwards I had an insight on the design of the scr circuit. We will need a beefy one to take the current loads we are going to put on it.

Day 97

Vacation

Day 96

Vacation

Day 95

Morning
When I got into work, they still hadn't started the Friday melt. I wasn't too thrilled to be around if they hit water, but that didn't come into play. There wasn't too much going on around here. Tony was working in the office. I cleaned up a few projects, then started to work on a document explaining the findings I've had on the inductor choke. I worked on that for a while before leaving for Sunriver.

Afternoon
Off for vacation.

Day 94

Morning
I went over more designs for the choke. I was trying to do some funky circuit with a bjt as a switch, but I gave up on it because it's just not very helpful to the project. I started trying to apply different filters to the output, but that never did much for the system. I went to town on the simulations, but it appears that the only thing to do is put a load resistor on the output. I also contacted Tibbs again. He is sending a contractor up here at lunch time.

Afternoon
I met with the fiber guys and showed them what I wanted to put in. They only walked with me for about 15 minutes, but then they spent some time walking around and measuring. I continued to look at the choke problem, and I went across the street to take some pictures.

Day 93

Morning
I started by going over to S9. Dennis was back at work, but he said that they were melting the rest of the week. It looks like we'll just have to get it next week. I needed to find a way to work on the choke problems. I really wanted to simulate the situation in SPICE, so I started looking for good old LT Spice. I was able to install it on a usb drive and get started. I built up a mock circuit using a voltage controlled switch as my short. The simulation showed me that it really all comes down to the L/R time constant. Make the resistance bigger, and the time to discharge the energy will be shorter. I want to come up with a clever way of doing that, but it'll take a little more thinking.

Afternoon
I got in touch with Craig Tibbs after lunch. He claims that he and one of his guys and he are going to contact me between 8:00 and 8:30 tomorrow morning. I am hoping that we can go through this quickly and get a rough estimate for my numbers. That is the final part of that project. I tried a few simulations with diodes at Tony's request, but they weren't what we needed at this point. I tried to read up on anything that was out there for decreasing that time frame, but it always came back to increasing the resistance.

Day 92

Morning
I went over to S9 to see if Jewell had any cooling time. He said that he'd be melting all day. I came back and looked over my Mecop power point presentation. Tony is plotting a bunch of curves of the interaction between bombardment and filament on EBW 4. I helped him out by giving him some readings from the 480 panel while he tweaked the PLC. It made for some nice curves that may show how to tune the welder. I went down to the admin building looking for Tibbs. He was actually there and said that he was already looking at the cost of the fiber. I answered a few questions that he had. I hope to hear back from him soon, but I may need to stay persistent.

Afternoon
I returned the computer from S10 to the backroom and took a few snapshots of the S8-S9 area for my presentation. They will go well with the beam pattern slide. I also started to look into the choke research. I am still a little shaky on a game plan for that. I started by reading through Tony's E&M book and trying to find what I need to know, so that I can ask the question that I will be answering. I am not very far on this project yet.

Day 91

Morning
I got started by going down to Craig Tibbs' office to try to track him down. He wasn't in today. Jim is also out for this entire week. I hit up Dean and Tobin on my maintenance hours estimate. Dean padded some of the numbers, and Tobin increased a few. I spent some time across the street talking with Curtis and Rich too. I was trying to find a time when S9 will be open so that I can try out some beam patterns using the existing PLC.

Afternoon
The drawing that I made for the backpanel didn't have a BOM or the new circuit breakers, so I added those items. Tony also pulled me over to Ken Hansen's office to look at what he did for beam patterns. He hooked up an old TekTronics scope with a Compact Logix cpu to produce a pretty good pattern. It wasn't perfect or anything, but it was more than we need for a furnace with only a small dedicated system. The real test will be if we can get away with just using the existing PLC. I am not as convinced as before, but all will be revealed when we try it out.

Day 90

Morning
There was a project overview meeting today. I went over the small projects first, most of which are 90% done. I set up a plan for each one to be completed with each thing that needs to be finished. The welder project is done except for the Craig Tibbs quote and verification of all the numbers. I was thinking I should write out a few things and organize the "project folder" so it will be well organized when I leave. Jim was working on two/three's power supplies, so I sat in on some of that troubleshooting.

Afternoon
I worked on finishing the E3 documents. I got the spreadsheets finalized and laminated. There is a copy up in the control room for the next change out. I also cleaned up a few things for the week.

Day 89

Morning
We went over across the street to change out the Von Ardenne computer on S10. They had been wanting to try out the spare, so this was the chance. Jim got it out and the spare put in. It didn't have any of the save files on it, so we had to load them off the old system using a floppy disk. The old system is sitting in Dean's office now. I walked down to see Josh Webster. He said everything looked good to him on our network plan. I still really need to talk to Criag Tibbs about the fiber installation.

Afternoon
I went over to the Concept systems Mecop tour. There were a lot of mechanical engineers on the tour, but most of them didn't seem to know a thing about automation controls or panel builds. It was sort of interesting, but they make some fairly elegant (maybe even too much so) solutions to problems. Jessica came over for the Wah Chang tour. My melting section went okay, but I never leave a tour with a fuzzy feeling about the group's learning.

Day 88

Morning
After the maintenance meeting I got to work patching up my cost document. Because I started it before the network meeting with Josh, I needed to update most of the parts and labor items to reflect our new game plan. I got a quote on DST licenses from PCE. I also got some complete numbers for all of the project. I filled in rough numbers with exact quotes, then I marked things that are still a guess. It looks like the upgrade for 4, 6, and 7 will be reasonable for cost, then each additional welder will be about $20k. That works out very well in the long run. We can get the three big welders, then slip in some small money for the older welders.

Afternoon
Ray was having issues with his Von Ardenne computer. Tony tried to find the problem, but no luck. We came back over to this side, and Tony got another call about the computer. This time, he called Josh Webster to take a look at it. He didn't find anything wrong. I polished the cost doc and worked on the stirring coil drawings. I got new prints and marked the nodes that I need power references from Jim. I got them down to him so he can look at them over night.

Day 87

Morning
It was really hot today. I started out by getting together a few things on my cost doc. I added in the new part quotes from NCE to the parts sheet. Rich gave me a call to get a status update on things. Tony and I went across the street to talk S7 before the plant engineering meeting. I sat in on that one, but it was mostly a small review of budgetary items. Tim went into detail about his electrical quotes. The mechanical quotes are less refined, but they are getting there. After the meeting, we talked with Rich about gun physics and Wah Chang things.

Afternoon
I called down to the instrument shop to get a price on the API action packs. I didn't get a number, $350, until the very end of the day. I also emailed out the new fiber plan to Craig Tibbs. The Q2 review was this afternoon down in the visitor's center. I caught a ride with Dean and sat in on that. It sounded like Matt didn't have a great quarter by his own admission.

Day 86

Morning
I got in early so I could leave early. I got to work writing questions that I wanted Josh Webster to answer about our trending network. I also got all the prints that I am going to need for that meeting together. Once I had everything together, I checked it over once more. There were a few issues with the arc furnaces during the maintenance meeting, so Tony went up to work on those. There were a few DeltaV topics to cover which took a few hours. We never could get a solid number for the sample time of an analog input. The meeting with Josh went well. We got some new ideas for the network including the use of switches. I still to get some questions answered, but that will take more time. I also got the quote in from NCE on my parts. They are not going to be too expensive.

Afternoon
Took off to surprise Claire.

Day 85

Morning
Tony wanted to adjust the anode spacer in 4, so I drove down to Fastnel to get some new Allen screws. When I got back, I stopped across the street to put some squid lube on them. That's nasty stuff if you get it on you. I brought them back over here, but Ted Benson was still welding away on his boxes, so Tony waited until later to change out the gun. I went back to work on some drawings for the network layout of the welder upgrade.

Afternoon
I continued to update the drawings, as well as think over the inductor choke issues. I never really know what to do about those, so it wasn't too productive. Tim stopped by to give Tony's IEEE books back and possibly go over the welder again. He didn't stay too long. I wrapped up my drawings and reviewed everything before I left.

Day 84

Morning
I came in and got to work on the cost doc. I added in some sections for parts. It became difficult to fill in what parts I would need for the networking aspect. I don't really know what solution we will find for that, so it is difficult to come up with a price quote. I set up a meeting with Josh Webster for Monday. We will discuss what we want to do, and what is then required for doing that. I am hoping that I can get a much better feel for the parts that I will need to do this so I can get closer to finishing the estimate.

Afternoon
I grabbed a little info off the switch from upstairs before going over to Allvac. I've never been over there, so it was cool to see a completely separate plant. They had a dual press system with an automatic weigh-blend system. They didn't have EB welders, instead they used plasma. They had a ton of furnaces all lined up in a row. It was cool to see the plant because they did a lot of things very similar and some much better. Their shop floor was laid out much better than ours.

Day 83

Morning
Ladd doesn't need the brake system that I designed. They are going to use a 120V coil. I finished up my drawings today. They helped me find a few things that I missed. The D.P. heat relay's weren't on the I/O, so I added them in. Once the drawings for the I/O was all done I wrote up a bill of materials and emailed it to North Coast for a price quote. Tony was having some strange issues on 4 EBW at around 11:00, so I watched the troubleshoot. It might have been a fluke thing, but we never did find the cause.

Afternoon
After helping Chris take a picture of a copper spot, I started to lay out the budget worksheet for the welder project. It has different sections for upgrading welders, putting them on the network, and for getting trending going. The difficult part for me is that I barely know what we need for parts, much less all the labor to install this stuff. I got started with all of the things I think we need, then I started estimating labor costs.

Day 82

Morning
I needed to get the brake drawings done. I finished up the panel drawing, then I made the schematic drawing. Once I had those finalized and printed, we took some of the junk in the office down to Jim's shop. I asked him what he thought. He didn't care too much, but he said that would work. I now needed to get the plans to Ladd. He wasn't in his office so I'll have to try later. I took the truck across the street to leave the box of trigger boards in the storage room.

Afternoon
I started the afternoon by taking a look at the list of Mecop knowledge points. I wanted to get a little better with PID's before I cross that one off, so I read up online about them. It was all stuff I already knew, but it doesn't hurt to see again. I then started to scope out what is left on the welder project. I need to finish the I/O drawings before I can send out a materials list for a quote. I also laid out other things that are yet to be done. When I talked to Tony, he has a lot of numbers that he wants in this budget including a large part of the trending costs. I will have to get all that rounded up, but first I want to get the materials out to North Coast.

Day 81

Morning
I came in and got started working on the new stinger brakes. 9-13 arc all have the same setup with the same brake and electrical controls. That same system needs to get onto 2, 3, 4, and 8. I started by looking at 8 arc because it is the most modern. I found some controls in the Rosemont, but the real work is done in a blue stinger control cabinet down in the shack. There is some relay logic done with Rosemont outputs to control the brakes. It can all be attributed to one relay in the panel. I found a similar deal inside the control cabinets for 2, 3, and 4. They are more primitive, but it will all work. I can adapt the current system to use the single relay from the old systems.

Afternoon
I started work on making a drawing of the new panel layout. I got a little distracted by things like Buck-Boost transformers and circuit breakers, but progress was made. I only needed a few parts to make the entire system work. I want to draw up the layout, then pass it off to Jim. He'll know what size enclosure to get and the best way to build them.

Day 80

Morning
Wit the beam pattern project cooled off, I started to look into the brakes on 2, 3, 4, and 8 arc. Ladd wants them to be updated to have the same braking unit that 9 - 14 have. The problem comes in the controls for those. It's a funky system that needs to get adapted to the old furnaces. I figured out where the brakes are and how they work now because I knew nothing of the stinger drive or any of that system. It looks like I have a bom for the current setup now, but adapting to the old furnaces is going to take a lot more work.

Afternoon
This was equipment overview day after ten minutes of fire watch for some rail welding. It was just Tony and I going over the cooling towers. I learned more about the pumping speeds and some considerations for the water. We went down to cooling tower five and across the street to have a look at them. I also returned the analog input card to Lyon.

Day 79

Morning
I needed to finish up the changes that I made to my beam pattern document so it would be ready for the meeting in the afternoon. Tim moved it up to 1:00 in the tech center. I continued to fill out the sections in the basic beam patterns part. It was difficult to figure out what needed to be written down and what was useless. Tony was working on a new control scheme for EBW4. He was out tuning PID's and watching their output during arc downs.

Afternoon
I got the document done in just enough time to eat my lunch and print off several copies. We walked over to the conference room. The building reminds me of something from campus, but the room itself was nice. They had a decent board table and two dozen nice office chairs. Ken Hansen had a lot of really got insights on the different options for beam control. Tim had done some research on different options, but most of them just fell off. It looks like Ken will be on his own for the S8 upgrade, then we'll use his attempts as a building block / test bed. That was kind of the end of my involvement in beam patterns. I took David back his PLC card and called it a day.

Day 78

Morning
Getting to work on beam pattern design documentation. Rich was in fairly early, so I asked him about what he wanted for the beams. It looks like he needs a low frequency (now this term has been dubbed rate of recurrence) in order to melt the metal in the pool a little, rather than just heat the surface. I set out to make some prints of beams with a set number of points. I started to make them in AutoCad.

Afternoon
I realized that AutoCad was a poor choice because I was already using Excel to generate the data points, so I might as well just use Excel to graph the data. I took some quick shots of a spiral and sine wave pattern for the document. In order to have it ready for the meeting tomorrow, I am splitting it up into two distinct sections: basic beam patterns and advanced beam patterns. The advanced section will be the work that I did last week. Hopefully that will preserve the work I've already done rather than just throwing it away.

Day 77

Morning
With Tony back, there were more things to do. He wanted to get the spacers from the machine shop. I reminded him of the S11 meeting, so we attended that. Afterwords, Tim talked about beam pattern design. I had no idea that Ken Hansen had been looking into that on S8 and they already had ideas of what they wanted to do. I can adapt my work for their needs, but I don't know if the way that they wanted to do it would really work best. I worked on some analysis of the resolution of the beam patterns.

Afternoon
I discussed my findings with Tony. He wants to look at making a really light table of values that can be adapted to become slower as necessary. The maximum frequency of the waves may be something like 8 Hz which is much faster than Rich said he would be needing. I drew up a process block in Visio to show how everything would flow. The trick seems to be communicating what frequencies, periods, and times are being discussed because it can become very unclear quickly.

Day 76

Morning
EBW4 was acting up again. I went out after I heard of two alarms that were holding them out. I went down to the shop to ask Jim about it. He said that he had wired some cable for the new pot, but that it was just landed to a terminal strip. He removed it and the welder worked... for about five minutes. I called Lyon to get some help. Once he cleared them out, the thing ran a production electrode. I worked on cleaning up the mess around the plc. I also finished marking up the beam pattern design document.

Afternoon
EBW4 was sitting, then pumping, so I didn't need to worry about it much. I made the new I/O layout for 2 & 3. I also went through the drawings that I had made up and fixed a few things on them. I also never finished the analog plc drawing, so I fixed that up as well.

Day 75

Morning
This morning was spent working on the beam pattern design. I got to work wiring a pot into the system so that I could see what adjusting on the fly would be like. It worked fairly well once I got a good scheme down for the wiring. The real interesting part was when I found the CH1 vs CH2 plots on the o-scope. I was only partially able to see the actual beam pattern because of the scan rate of the scope. I am hoping that they will look a little better when using the actual beam. I programmed in a few options and watched them go.

Afternoon
I began to document all of the different patterns in my document. I grabbed screenshots of them using the online parametric application. Dean needed help loading 11 so I spent a few minutes helping with that. It was interesting to watch the automated pump down on the furnace. They got down to about eight microns without a jet. It did take a while, but that's not too shabby. I stayed late to work on the document to ensure that it was close to done before weeks end.

Day 74

Morning
Getting to work on S9 beam patterns. I had Dean help me with the work order so I could go down to North Coast and buy an end cap for the Compact Logix here in the office. After getting stung by a bee in the truck, I got my cap and put it on. With minimal fiddling I managed to get the unit working. With some plc programming I was able to make cosine waves and other oscillations on the oscilloscope. I was even able to make the full equation that I wanted. I realized that it would be impossible to make a parametric view of this that would show what the beam pattern will look like.

Afternoon
I worked on the documentation for the beam patterns. I wanted to get a pot on the plc, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. I wrote up all of the math concepts (two waves with tunable frequencies). I haven't hit any problems yet. I also took a :30 minute ethics course online. I don't know where they come up with some of these things, but if they want me to watch it, I guess I will.

Day 73

Morning
When I went out to the welder, the gun had already been pulled and inspected. There was nothing wrong with it. Rich ran it for a little while and came to the conclusion that it needs feedback from the main beam current for sure. The cathode will become too hot from the beam at higher powers and the beam will run away from you. He called Tim down to talk about the changes. We got an operator to weld on those boxes. Tim went over all the controls and discussion with Rich. Then Jim came down to get the wiring changes we will need including a new pot for the spot focus. I talked with him about the welder project, then I continued to work on the work bench Compact Logix.

Afternoon
The work bench wasn't working. After I got the firmware to update, I attempted to put something on the output to read with the oscilloscope. It kept giving me some I/O communication faults. I think they stem from not having and end cap to terminate the internal bus. Regardless, I can't get it working for right now. I asked Lyon, and also went to the stock room. I'll try again in the mean time. I started writing the documentation on the beam patterns because if nothing else I can provide a document to show how to get this stuff to work.

Day 72

Morning
A lot happened today. Jim stopped by the office to ask about the Moore isolators on EBW 4. I didn't know anything about them other than they serve the same purpose as an API unit. Apparently, one of the isolators happened to be wired incorrectly. The Moore unit was fried though (you could smell it). Jim went down to the instrument shop, and returned with an API module. The current shunt still didn't work like it was supposed to when he got it put in. The readout was going from 4-->0 mA instead of 4-->20 mA.

Afternoon
Jim flipped the leads on the API to get the right readout. That produced some good results. With the welder going, he called Rich to take a look at what I call "gun physics." I went back into the office to try to work on some EBW 2/3 documentation. While I was out tracing pressure switches, Rich showed up. We started to run the welder. With a few small adjustments of the focus, he got a beam that could weld. We lost the D.P.'s at one point and then the filament went upon start up. I need to get the gun pulled and repaired for another try tomorrow. I never had time to work on S9 and the beam patterns.

Day 71

Morning
So begins a week on my own. I started the day by laying out what I wanted to get done on the welder project for this week. I need to get cracking on EBW 2 and 3. I did write the SLC 150 theory of operation back in May, but I haven't done the I/O map, desired theory of operation, wiring map, or cad drawings. I got started on the I/O map. That got finished up by lunch time. Their are differences, but mostly just the pressure switches.

Afternoon
Their isn't much going on around here. EBW 4 is loaded with a recycle box, but nobody is running it. I spent some time working on the desired ToOp, but took a break at the end of the day. I searched around for stinger drawings, then went around to a few furnaces (14, 10, 2/3) to try to get a better look at the brakes. I don't know what I am looking for yet, but I will be getting there.

Day 70

Pre-4th of July

Day 69

Morning
Today was the first day without Tony. I started work on the plc setup for S9. Lyons got me a card, but it wasn't what I needed. I wired up Tony's compact logix with the PS-4 power supply and the Sola HD 24VDC supply. Greg stopped in to ask about ebw4. When he was trying to run, the voltage readout was always high. I should have known the problem right away, but it didn't don on me until later. We took a look at the gun before the Mecop lunch.

Afternoon
I went to check on Greg once I got back from a tour of Fab. He said that Jim found a broken "feedback resistor" upstairs. When I found Jim, he had found a busted shunt in the HV cage. High voltage reading means bad shunt. He won't have a replacement until early next week. I went to the stock room and got a 1769-OF2 analog output card. Once everything was wired together I read some documents on how to get setup with the compact logix.

Day 68

Morning
There was a small safety review for the railings that Dean put on 8 ARC. It was a small and informal SI-08. Everyone seemed to like the changes he made. We then went to the meeting with the guys from industrial systems to get the new look for the HPM automation. They put in a new boom that was pretty impressive. When we went out to take a look at the press, it was really making some noise when it pushed the compacts out. Dave said it was only on the 16" die.

Afternoon
I worked on my drawing just a touch more. There always seem to be little things to fix on them. I gave the analog card 24VDC rather than 120VAC. I also updated a few more fine details. Those drawings are hopefully all done now. I also got my midterm appraisal. Tony had no problems with anything that I've done, and he was happy with things like my documents and speed picking up on things. That went really well. Not much got done in the last hour. I worked on some drawings and such while Tim came by to talk about spending on 4EBW.

Day 67

Morning
HPM issues again. This time the punch head would jerk rather than raise after punching a compact out. After some digging around the program, Tony found a temposonic that was giving a zero reading for about one cycle, which was just enough to cause problems. We put a debounce in to fix the issue, then passed off the strange programming to Lyons. I also asked him about getting an analog out card for beam patterns.

Afternoon
I worked on my service drawing for a little while. When I needed the breaker information, I went out to the floor to have a look around. It was a good exercise to try to find all of the mains and service breakers. Tony finally showed me that the bank 46 service is in a shed with 4 arc's power supplies. We also went across the street to S8 to have a look at the west gun.

Day 66

Morning
There were a few outstanding maintenance issues this morning. 10 ARC was shorting out so it couldn't be run. Jim was up and down the thing looking for a problem. They found that the bellows was screwed up. Later, they also found that there was some bad micarta in the power supply diode stacks. I went down to the visitors center for an HF class. It was very informative, but I don't want to go anywhere near the pickle room now.

Afternoon
The afternoon went a little slower. I worked on a few of the drawings for the welder upgrade. Tony pulled the gun out of 4 to put a few anode spacer rings in that we got from Curtis. They might not be enough, but we won't know until there is some new material to put in the welder. I took the old anode across the street. Curtis said that it wasn't too bad at all, but it does need a good cleaning.

Day 65

Morning
We had our project review meeting this morning. I went through the progress that I made on the welder project and we talked about what kind of work I would need to do while Tony was gone to Alaska. It looks like I will be working on getting quotes for the welder parts, as well as working on the S9 project and finding information about the stinger brakes on 9/10. I also cleaned up my desk area a little. When I did, it reminded Tony that I need to look at these Von Ardenne boards that have an issue with them.

Afternoon
Tony went to go over drawings with Tim, so I was alone to work on cad drawings. I finished up the input drawing for the welders, but I didn't want to start anything that late for the service overview drawing. I did a little more research into inductive choke filters, but I will need to spend more time to really get into this topic. I am still only getting a rough idea of what's going on with those.

Day 64

Morning
There weren't too many things to run around to this morning, so it was mostly working the office on the plc cad drawings. I made a really nice, and clear, drawing showing the plc outputs for the new system. We did shuffle some of the outputs a little bit from when I wrote the program, but that's okay.

Afternoon
I continued to update the drawing as well as the i/o wiring spreadsheet. It worked out well that all of the valves are on one card and all the pumps are on another. I started to work on the input one as well. I also email Chris Haller to see if he knew anything about chokes, but my information was too vague to provide anything.

Day 63

Morning
We started out the day meeting two representatives from Wonderware down in the visitor center. I'd say it is still up in the air with what we are going to use for trending in general in melting. I am glad that that choice doesn't change most of the work that I'll be doing to get trending working around here. Those old welders need an upgrade regardless. We came back and worked on a few things before pulling the gun out of 4.

Afternoon
We took the gun across the street to have Curtis take a look at it. The cathode had some serious melting on the backside, which is fairly strange. There wasn't any new material to be put through, so there will be a wait before we can try the gun again. We still need those anode spacers too. I worked on the drawings for the welder plc upgrade.

Day 62

Morning
There was a big "kick off" meeting for S11 down in the visitor center. It had Tony, Dean, and a lot of plant engineers (Tim, JJ, Justin Wu, Joe, and one more). There was a lot of discussion on a variety of topics, but nothing that was very concrete. Tim grabbed Tony for some EBW 4 redlines. Afterwords we hit up the machine shop and Curtis before going back to melting.

Afternoon
While I was waiting for some EBW 4 prints, I found Greg to ask about his trial run yesterday. He said that everything was about normal except that the auto striping was way off and so be bowed the electrode at first. He fixed it up and got some new material in the welder already. A couple of issues on EBW 7 later we made it over EBW 4. Lots of little fixes in the afternoon.

Day 61

Morning
Start up went very well. There was one issue with a blower on 8 ARC, but nothing else had any problems. We got Greg welding away in EBW 4. He started laying down real stripes for us. The welder did alright, but the material was pretty nasty. Lots of off gas and eventually some oiling that gave the gun a fit. Tony wants to get a spacer in the gun to up the power. There was also a little meeting with a vendor from Delta systems where he demoed there product for the automated HPM unloading.

Afternoon
Started out with a meeting about the future of trending in this department. We went over all of the things that would be good to see on a screen in the foreman's office. Eventually, this kind of information will move into trending and maintenance screens. Tim stopped by and showed Tony (and I) how to program the panel view's that we've got. He also discussed a few other topics like S11 and the Old Bliss Press.

Day 60

Morning
Lots of little things to take care of before Tony left for a wedding. Had an SI08 meeting for EBW 4. No big action items resulted from that. There were some talk about the new furnace (S11) and what kind of massive job it will be. We ran across the street and threw a bit into S9 to fix the argon bottle issue. The fix was very clever. There is a lock-in bit over a push button in one rung. Tony dropped the argon bit into that rung. When the bottle goes dry, the bit will turn off leaving only the push button to start the gun back up.

Afternoon
Tobin stopped by and asked a few questions so we took a look at the HPM press. When they serviced the hydraulics they left a few pistons up that were causing a lock out. Tobin pushed them down only to find that the lines are hooked up backwards now. It did fix the problem. Tony took off for his sister-in-law's wedding. I took a look through a controls book and fixed up some small things before taking off for the week.

Day 59

Morning
Tony was out due to some nasty allergies, so it was all on me today. I snagged the maintenance laptop and continued to work on the new welder program. I put in all the logic for the three states, the light controls, and updates to some of the state transitions. It should all be done with by now.

Afternoon
I spent some time finishing up the program and documenting anything that was wrong in my theory of operation document. I accidental missed the D.P. heat control, so I needed to add that back in. I also used Excel to make an I/O map to convert from SLC150 to new PLC. This time the inputs and outputs are arranged by function rather than randomly. It shouldn't be a problem landing the wires. I finished up the day looking at inductor chokes.

Day 58

Morning
I spent most of the morning finishing up changes to the theory of operation document. I redrew the state diagram based off a conversation with Tony about how to handle insert changes. It ended up being the same state diagram, but the pumping state now has a little aside for changing out the gun. I also added a way to go from backfill to shutdown. I got everything squared away and printed out a new copy of the doc.

Afternoon
I went down to the shop and picked up the laptop. It wasn't too bad getting started in RS Logix 5000 because I've done 500 and seen enough on EBW 4 to know where some things are. I got the interlocks and state transitions programmed in. Now I need to fill out the workings of the states themselves. No plans for testing yet.

Day 57

Morning
Document updates. I updated the I/O layout to include more information, the Theory of Operation document to reflect some of the changes that we discussed on Monday, and the drawings that I made yesterday for the trending network stuff. I still have more to do on the Theory doc, but it's getting closer to completion. We got out to the welder to try out Tim's new controls finally. There were a couple of bugs to work around, but Tony got a beam going in there.

Afternoon
Looking at the controls, the PID's were really out of whack. Tony started adjusting the numbers on the fly to produce a smoother transition between the auto and manual state. He also got a few just plain fixes in there to make the thing run. There were still some issues with the bombardment ramp and getting a beam back after an arc.

Day 56

Morning
When Tony got here we had a meeting to go over the welder project. I showed him the document that I had been working on. There are still some things that need to be fixed on it before it's complete. We sat on the welder for a bit while Josh Webster updated one of the switches. That inspired a question about the Mynah-Delta V gear. We took a look at some of the network gear around melting.

Afternoon
I worked on the document a little, but I also drew up some CAD drawings for network diagrams. Tony wants two options: one using the existing switch, and one with a new switch. The drawings themselves aren't too bad (most CAD drawings aren't), but I wanted to be sure they were clear and useful.

Day 55

Morning
There was an issue with a motor down in the pumphouse. One of the cold well pumps would indicate that it was running when it was actually off due to a device net issue. We spent some time looking at it up in the control room, then down in the pump house. There was also an issue with S9 and an argon bottle interlock, but we didn't have the time to go get that fixed. I went to the monthly engineering meeting which was about the budget.

Afternoon
There was a fall protection class that I supposed to go to, but with only one in attendance he canceled it. Came back and got a little done on the welder with Tim's new program. All of the PID controls should be better now, but we won't know until we get some time to test it out for real.

Day 54

Morning
We worked on EBW 4 more. Tim came out with his new program, but unfortunately it was not the right one. He lost some work and had to return to his office to finish it. That set us back a ways on the welder, but we did set up a list of things to do.

Afternoon
They put a different stock into the welder. This time we got some recycle turning compacts. They will be useful because they off gas as the welder runs so it will be a more robust test. No updates from Tim, so the welder didn't run for the rest of the day. I did get some work done on my TOP document.

Day 53

Morning
Getting EBW 4 welding. When Tony went up to the high voltage cage, he found that a shunt had blown. Looks like 5A went through a 2A rated shunt. When the shunt went, so did the DC trip board. That explains what the problem was late last week. Jim fixed a few things up, then we ran. Rich and an operator ran the welder most of the morning. Tim stopped by to work on the displays and controllers. Tony was trying to do about three things at once. We got trip settings adjusted and some things updated, but found a few issues with the main beam.

Afternoon
The main beam arcs hard when it starts up because the trigger board and contactor come on at the same time. The beam also needs to trip at the end of the electrode while it turns around. Tony wants to put a relay in that connects to the PLC so he can program those things in. With meetings taking over, it was difficult to get back out there. Tim was working out here for a while, but he returned to his office after a time. I used the time to get more done on my welder project. I'm only a little ways off from writing the program for it, but I need to have a more formal review with Tony before I do that.

Day 52

Morning
Most of the morning was spent working on my new program. I had the state machines worked out from the day before, so I started defining the internals of each state much better. Once I really got into it, it looked more and more like I would need to revise the states from five to a simple three because of the limitations of the welder interface. Greg came by as well, so I helped him reset his panelmate down in seven.

Afternoon
I now took apart my state machine and looked at what I would need and be able to implement. I contracted the program down to the three core functions. After one of Tony's meetings we talked about a few details of backfilling and how to implement the interlocks in the program. Each state will have a much more focused goal, but that makes the program a little more dependent on the interlocks than originally planned. We also had a meeting with Tim and Matt about four's progress. Welding tomorrow.

Day 51

Morning
After working on some welder documents and attending a pre-shutdown meeting, we got the new CT's in by air mail. The will transform 1A to 1V. Gave them to Jim to put in up there, but Tony was loaded with meetings so they didn't get put in until the afternoon. I finished up the I/O documents for EBW 1 and 5.

Afternoon
I started to work on the theory of operation document. I found that it would be best to look at the five states of the welder as the five major headings for this document: Startup, hold, shutdown, back-fill, and leak rate. I started to change that over when Tony came back and we went out to four. We got the bombardment up and the trip settings in place. It worked like a champ. Tomorrow we will be able to get it welding again.

Day 50

Morning
Without any properly sized CT's for the bombardment feedback, we looked at getting a current switch that could be used to trigger the external limit on the trigger board. The problem was that the only ones Jim had in the shop were normally closed, so it would have to be put together with a relay to make it work. At this news, Tony decided to just wait until Monday to get the real CT's. I came back and worked on the welder upgrade. I started to revise the desired theory of operation document when I became distracted by the errors in my I/O sheet. It took me the rest of the morning to improve it, but I did make it much more useful and found old oil on EBW 2's Stokes 212 pump.

Afternoon
This was equipment overview time. Our third installment skipped over welders because of the amount of time spent working on four. Instead, we tackled arc furnaces. I learned a lot more about the things that are done to the metal to get a more consistent chemistry, like how to combine portions from different parts of the melt. I haven't spent much time working on any furnace, so this will probably be the majority of what I learn. We also shut down a DI water pump on 14 to see if the new one can handle the full load.

Day 49

Morning
Now that the bombardment works, the trigger boards need to be tuned for trip settings and limitations. Tony and I were working on that when Rich came by to check on the progress. We had it working so well that we actually started pulling a beam. Rich warmed it up, then started to put down a stripe. It was a really focused, nice looking weld. Unfortunately, we also popped the DC trip board upstairs. The CT's that are on the bombardment side are too big, so we weren't getting the voltage signal that we needed. We stole a few from Tobin's old test bench across the street but those still don't work.

Afternoon
Without the right sized CT's in there, we couldn't do much. Tony found that an arestor in the high voltage cage had actually snapped in two, but NWL said that it wasn't necessary to the function of the supply. We cooled things down a little and started looking for some CT's. LEM has a model that we are getting a quote on. I found another company, AcuAmp, that makes something that might work. We will have to wait and see.

Day 48

Morning
With the new resistor banks in from the night electricians, we set out to test the bombardment on the dummy load. The tests were not very successful as it still wouldn't stabilize at all. We blew some fuses and needed to get replacements for those. Even after taking the circuit down to the scr's and plugging in a space heater, we still didn't get the right voltage. Things weren't looking too good.

Afternoon
Tony figured there must be something wrong with the trigger board to be causing problems this far back in the circuit. We took the amplifier prints up to the 480 panel and started tracing wires. The wires from the 120 to the 480 were fine, but on the actual scr's themselves there was something wrong. The wire from the scr trigger to the driver board was flipped. The negative thyristor was firing when the positive should have been and vice versa. We flipped them around and presto, the thing was pulling like a champ. Tony got all the crap that we'd put in to test out and the bombardment work great. Ordered up some fuses for tuning.

Day 47

Morning
Still trying to get the bombardment circuit to work perfectly. Tony got a replacement transformer from Owen, as well as a modified trigger board. The electricians got the new transformer up onto the mezzanine, but it wasn't installed. Tony was looking into putting a resistive load on the end rather than using the real bombardment. We got the resistors we needed from the pig shed and then made up the board out in the electric shop. Tony and I spent some time looking at the zener diodes before lunch.

Afternoon
With the electricians swamped with calls, the changes to ebw 4 didn't get finished. I worked on my desired theory of operation document for ebw 1 and 5. It looks like the old program will be only slightly useful for creating the new setup. I used ebw 7 as an example on a procedure that uses states. With some work, the new program will look and run in a much more straight forward way than the current setup.

Day 46

Morning
I worked in the office during the morning. Starting by layout the I/O for EBW 1 and 5, I was trying to get some more work done on the welder upgrade. I began drafting a desired theory of operation document. It will outline what the system needs to do and in what order. From there I can write up the new program in RS Logix 5000.

Afternoon
Working with Tony on getting the fixes for EBW 4 going. We grabbed a different trigger board from S7 and some diodes from the instrument shop before trying to fire the bombardment again. It worked pretty well until the small transformer blew. It threw a pretty large puff of white smoke. We should get a new trigger board from Owen before long.

Day 45

Morning
Looking for answers on using a choke to fix the power supply woes, Tony called up Owen, an off site contractor that did work on the S8 power supply. We went down to his office to speak with him about the design. He had a list of things that needed to be fixed including choke inductors on both sides of the scr's to limit the surge current and to reduce the voltage spikes that may be causing all our problems. He also threw in ideas for low-pass filter to eliminate the high frequency components that could jump the transformer.

Afternoon
We took a look at a little bit of the math involved with these concepts, then went back down to the office to pick up some reactors that Owen got from Platt earlier in the day. We had a chance to see his workshop which was interesting. While we were out, there was a fire in one of the bag houses up in extrusion. It was a pretty big mess by the time we got back.

Day 44

Morning
Again, trying to get the bombardment scr to work. The idea was that maybe the scr is not holding from a lack of current flow. Thinking of the scr like a diode that has a set point, the scr will pass a waveform once that set point is hit until the zero crossing of the wave or until the current is lower than a threshold. To try to increase the current flowing through the circuit, we made up a resistor board that will have around 800 mA of current flowing through each phase line to keep the scr's on.

Afternoon
With the board assembled, we went up and gave it a shot. With no load, the thing works great. After reapplying the transformer, it did not preform as well. It could be due to the inductive properties of the transformer, or perhaps a different problem. It will probably take more tinkering before a full solution becomes apparent.

Day 43

Morning
It was time for EBW 4 to get a beam going. The day started with Tony and Jim troubleshooting a few problems while trying to get the bombardment and filament current working. I followed them out to watch the beam get going. There was a succession of problems all day though. At around 10:30, they pulled the gun and took it over to Curtis for a rebuild. Got that pumping and took a quick lunch.

Afternoon
More testing. The SCR's still weren't firing right. Tony put in a few resistors to check out how the board was doing independent of the gun. Turns out it is not the gun. He got a space heater to use as a load to test the thing out. I spent time in the operator shack turning the bombardment on and turning it up. That won't be necessary once the heater gets used to troubleshoot.

Day 42

Morning
I spent some time working on my back panel drawing. I added in the Ethernet switch and the Sola power supply for that switch. With those additions in, I went back to the stirring coil panel layout and made a few updates that Jim wanted, then I took that down to him so he could have a look.

Afternoon
EBW 4 is almost ready to rumble, so I went out to watch the beam go. First Tony was checking the bombardment voltage and current, then he tried to get a beam, but there was a discrepancy between the voltage and current on the 480 panel and on the controls. After some tinkering in the high voltage cage, it seems that the current transformers were not wrapped the right number of times, so the panel is under reading by a factor of five. Jim is going to fix that in the morning and we'll try again.

Day 41

Memorial Day

Day 40

Morning
I continued to work on the drawings for the new back panel in the old welders. I found that I will need a 24V supply to power the Ethernet switch. I also put in a side view to indicate the clearance in the panel. When Tony got back from across the street, we took a look at the HPM program and made the two updates that they were requesting, but couldn't check them because there wasn't an operator running at the time.

Afternoon
Work on EBW4. Started checking I/O and getting the reset button to finally function. There was a lot of checking the Kepco's to see if they were working and tuned. Mostly it was running from the shack to the gun cage back up to the high voltage cage and around again. At least the two SCR panels were working today.

Day 39

Morning
It was time to check all the safety systems on ebw4. We got power to the safety relay yesterday, but the thing still wasn't working right. We got a few trouble shooting guides, then took a look at the safety interlocks. There was some problem in the scr control panel that was causing issues. First, it might be the isotrol, then the transformer. Turns out it was the inrush to the breaker that was causing a trip.

Afternoon
Went down to North Coast to snag a new breaker which fixed the issues up on that panel. Now the safety systems are all working except for a few switches. They put in a old zirc recycle ingot into the welder body to be used to test the beam out on. That probably won't happen soon because there are still some changes to be made in the high voltage cage as well as all the plc stuff still to get fixed.

Day 38

Morning
Went out to ebw4 and made an attempt to get it pumped down. The vacuum was too high for how long the mechanical pumps had been on it, so Rich and Tony started looking for a leak. They put helium on every possible seal and couldn't find a leak. They figured it must be some accumulated water inside the tank. It got down to about 15 microns by lunchtime.

Afternoon
Since Tim was still not around, Tony and I started the checkoff procedures. We got a list of things that need to be checked before the power for the gun can even be turned on. When Tim did show up, he started getting the Flex I/O working. We had some issues with a few systems up in the power supply. Jim took a look at a few things, and eventually we got the Flex I/O to communicate from the mezzanine down to the shack. The safety relay wasn't working, but I found a document online that should help fix the problem.

Day 37

Morning
I started to look at the cost of all the parts needed for a welder upgrade. I tried to figure out exactly which power supply I needed for the plc, then gathered up some part numbers and prices to make an excel spreadsheet. I've got all the parts that I think will be involved, but it's still fairly rough.

Afternoon
There was an issue getting the plc on EBW4 to communicate with a remote module. Tony went out to take a look at it, but that didn't do much good because he needed a newer version of the Allen Bradley software to communicate with it. Tim showed up and started diagnosing the problem which stemmed from the device not having an IP address but requiring access through IP to configure that information. Despite those problems, the end-bell was refastened and the pumps were started. The welder got down to about 2 Torr without any jets.

Day 36

Morning
Starting the backpanel drawing for the new welder plc. I started with the exact size of panel that would go into EBW 2 and 3. The only problem with that is not every welder has the same panel. I cracked open one to find that the layout is different in every way. We had to move the staircase in front of five to get at that panel with is completely different from one, two, and three. Besides that, the plc will have to go in sideways to two and three to make everything fit. It's starting to get a little nuts.

Afternoon
I was trying to find information about power needs for the plc. I don't really know what kind of DC supply (if any) will need to go in the cabinet. It really depends on the analog in module. I've been hunting for documents on the total power needed for that card slot. There was also an issue out on the HPM that I sat in on and tried to help with. There are some alignment issues with the new die block and the pins on the press. They got enough of a fix to get it pressing at least.

Day 35

Morning
I worked on updating a few drawings, then on the program for EBW 2 and 3. I wanted to get started on writing a new program. This doesn't involve much in creativeness, rather it is more about rewriting rungs in a more modern, efficient manner. Some of the old ways things were done just weren't working. I've include latching bits, and using timers for debouncing on both start and stop. This will hopefully make the program work a little better.

Afternoon
I continued to make improvements while waiting for EBW3 to get reloaded. I kept checking on it, but it didn't get going until a little later in the afternoon. I sat in on the pump down. It really wasn't exciting, but I did learn of a little issue with a leak rate, and found that this program did a better job of debouncing pressure switches than the EBW 1/5 program.

Day 34

Morning
Tim wanted a layout of what is already out at the Old Bliss panel for a contractor. I went out and got the button configuration, but I couldn't find any drawings. Tony has a booklet on his desk that came from that project upgrade, and it had everything I needed. I made copies and then scanned them in. I emailed that back, and didn't hear anything back so far. I also finished the theory of operation document for EBW 1 and 5. That program is much harder to describe because a lot of the practices don't make much sense.

Afternoon
I went out on the floor and traced out the vacuum schematics of EBW 1 and 5 to make sure the matched up with the prints that I have. Other than the missing jet, everything is the same. I came back in and proof read my draft, then looked over the things I had left to do.

Day 33

Morning
This morning I tracked down the only small edits to EBW 2 and 3 that were made. I went to the electric shop and found a print that had the new rungs on it. Just as we thought, they were for the newly installed jet. There was a meeting for the Old Bliss press this morning. There was a discussion of the budget, especially pertaining to the drawing that I made. I got the EBW 5 program from David after that, so I began to check it against EBW 1.

Afternoon
I worked on the theory of operation document for EBW 1 and 5. For the most part it got filled out, but it's not done yet. I also took a little break to go over and visit Curtis. He rebuilt the gun for EBW 7 and had it pumped down. I got a board that needed replacing in the new power supply for 4, then came back over to melting and continued to work on the document.

Day 32

Morning
I worked on the drawing of the Old Bliss press panel for Jim. He wanted something with a new panel view and a load of push buttons. I grabbed a few rough dimensions, then found the closest Hoffman enclosure and worked from there. Most of the drawings were straight from a manufacturer, so there wasn't much to the real drawing. I worked on that most of the morning.

Afternoon
Went to a meeting for the Old Bliss and Powder Met. service upgrade. They want to get some overlap of outages so that Brandon doesn't lose the press for too long. Turns out the projects are on different time tables, so they won't overlap. Also went down to the copper shop to look at a crucible out of S9 that hit water in the morning. There was a large gouge on the side. Finished up by finding drawings for EBW 5 and learning a little about SCR's.

Day 31

Morning
I finished the theory of operation document for EBW2 and EBW3. I tried my best to only describe what the program is doing, rather than how it does it. With any luck, that SLC 150 will be replaced and all of the how will change to a more modern setup. After I completed that, I started looking at EBW1. I hoped it would be the same program. I was wrong. I went through that program and deciphered it. There were some modifications that weren't in the drawing, so I had to find what those do.

Afternoon
I began the hunt for the two updates to the program. I started looking at drawings in the system. Nothing showed any of these modifications. I then moved to looking at the actual welder for some clues. Not much help there. Finally, I went to the electric shop and found a print with the hand drawn updates from 2001. I copied those down. I'll need to write up another theory of operation doc for 1, but I think EBW5 is similar in design, so I want to get that program. Jim needs a few updates for my stirring coil prints, and he also wants a box drawn up for the Old Bliss Press meeting on Wednesday.

Day 30

Morning
I started to write up a theory of operation on the SLC150 program. It might have started out a little too in depth about the program, rather than about the theory. I went out and sat in on a pump down for five. It was pretty uneventful, other than the jets coming on. They work on a set point of the hastings gauge, which doesn't have a bounce time. After about five on-off cycles the operator finally just moved the set point on the gauge higher. We should fix this in the new program. I also listened to the new ideas for the HPM automated unloading.

Afternoon
This was all equipment overview. It was vacuum today, so I was already in good shape from earlier in the week. We went over most of the stuff I taught myself, but I still learned about the design of the systems. We went and looked at EBW 7. It has a really nice layout for everything.

Day 29

Morning
It was finally time to decipher the old SLC 150 program from the welders. I spent some time on the hunt for good drawings of the vacuum system, which took longer than one might hope it would. I found that there are a range of drawings for EBW2 and 3 if you know where to look. I ran through the program, marking which systems came on when and for what reason. There was only one real snag, which was the small blower on the tank. It had some funky logic with two timers that took a little time to figure out.

Afternoon
With a better understanding of the program itself, it was time to look at the upgrade PLC. The MicroLogix 1100 has the ethernet capability that we need, but it may be limiting on the I/O expansion. It doesn't look like that unit will work. After that, I started looking at the Compact Logix that were put in the EBW4 upgrade. Those units are more expensive, but they have more functionality as well.

Day 28

Morning
Today was all about vacuum. I started by looking at the EBW3 program. Because I got a drawing that had most of the IO labeled, I figured that reading the program would be a snap. Once I got started, I realized that I didn't really understand the vacuum process well enough to breeze through the program. I started by reading about different pumps on the web. Tony came in and gave me a book on vacuum that was really helpful in understanding the different technologies (DP, Jet, screw pumps, Roots pumps, etc.).

Afternoon
With my new vacuum knowledge, I followed Tony around EBW4 a little. The upgrades are really coming together. I was checking out everything they had done, plus I was sneaking peaks at the vacuum system to see if I understood it. Around 3:00 I started reading the actual EBW3 program and found that I did breeze through it with an intuition for what was going on. I just needed to grab a few prints of the valve work and spend some time to get it all worked out.

Day 27

Morning
After finding a parametric equation plotter on the web, I began work on the welder upgrade. First, I looked at the SLC150 program that David got to me on Monday. I rewrote the program (only 52 rungs) on my own paper and made a flow diagram to see how the program really operates. I was trying to find a drawing or something to tell me what the nodes actually corresponded to on the welder when it came time for the Mecop meeting. Once I found the Zirc conference room in the admin building, we had a nice little pow-wow and then took a tour of Extrusion which I had never seen before.

Afternoon
I came back trying to find something to tell me what all the nodes of the SLC150 corresponded to on the real welder. I found that Jim's filing cabinets have all kinds of drawings, notes, and sketches for all the equipment that came in handy. I found a few drawing numbers and a couple useful sketches. I was tracing the program when I got a call about touring the R&D facility, so I took advantage of that and got to see the old meat-packing plant.

Day 26

Morning
With EBW 4 upgrades going, I was in the office working on a few projects. I emailed David and got the SLC 150 programs for EBW 1, 2, and 3 by lunch. I can start looking through those to figure out what the MicroLogix 1100's will need. I also gave my S8 drawings to Matt for a final check off. Spend a large piece of time working on the beam pattern design. I got out the old TI 83 and started plotting parametric equations to see what the patterns would look like. By lunch, I figured I could get away with using sines and cosines with cosine terms in the amplitude to get more oscillations.

Afternoon
Continued to work on the beam patterns, but got a little bit more set on what I was doing. I found the form of the equations that I wanted to use, and got the patterns that would be useful. I also took some ideas I found on the web and worked them in. I'll need to write this all into a PLC. I also got the okay from Matt and Tony, so I sent the S8 drawings off to the drafting office. Finished off the day by watching NorthWest Industrial lift the new transformer above 4.

Day 25

Morning
Went over to the other side to continue work on S7. Got the water hoses cleaned off after some time and put the new ones on. After that, came back to the melting side and looked into the network requirements of the welder project. A little in advance, but I wanted to get a better picture of what that part of the project would look like.

Afternoon
Got approval from Frank Susnik on my S8 drawings. Needed to make one more label, then they'll be ready. Just need to get Matt to sign off on them next week when he gets back from vacation. I grabbed the laptop from Jeff and took a look at the Control Logix program on S9. There is a lot of spare code on it for the movement of the guns that isn't being used. It shouldn't be too hard to make patterns, but most of it will just be doing rather than planning or designing.

Day 24

Morning
Jim asked for my drawings for the stirring coil panels this morning, so those got a little touch up and I gave him a set. Ladd was back at the maintenance meeting as well. After a slow start, Tony and I got the water tubing torn off 7 and began replacing it. He also got the north bosh working after replacing a few fuses.

Afternoon
Because of a meeting with Phil about the business plan, we didn't head back across the street in the afternoon. I polished up a few more drawings before the meeting, then I listened for a half hour. After that, I tried to get some data on the Hastings vacuum gauges that are being used in the welders. I couldn't find anything from Hastings about the electrical output. Getting that information will give me a better idea of what it will take from a PLC side to get trending going.

Day 23

Morning
After getting ready to put the north gun on 7, Tony and I came back over to look at 2 and 3 arc. There was a missing bit in a line of logic that was in an old TI program, but not in the new SLC program. Jim found and replaced it. After making the update to the network, we went back across the street. I got the north gun in place while Tony put the base on the south-east gun. I started to clean a gun for 7EBW.

Afternoon
There was a meeting at Engineering about the Old Bliss Press upgrade. I didn't know much about it, but it's still a ways out from being done. After that, Tony looked into what it would take to get 7 pumping by the weekend. After a talk with Ray, we grabbed some hose for the two south guns that will get put in tomorrow.

Day 22

Morning
After looking over a few things for the EB upgrade, there was a meeting to throw ideas about a side-fed arc furnace. Puopolo had some previous knowledge of this topic, so he was sharing with Tony, Chris, and Dean. After that meeting, we headed to the EB side and worked on the guns more. I finished cleaning "mine" off using soap and water on the insulator and a wire brush on the remainder.

Afternoon
Reassembly of the gun. Putting new O-rings in and putting the gun back together. Curtis ran it through a pump down station and it held a good vacuum. Tony tore down the third gun, we cleaned it, and then reassembled it. The first gun is now mounted on S7, but some of the bases need to be worked on before the rest of them are good to go.

Day 21

Morning
The HPM press was having some type of issues, but Tony wasn't back from Alaska yet, so I walked out there to find Jeff and Tobin already looking at it. Once Jeff got into the program, it was clear that a button on the panel-mate was stuck. Jim popped it and presto. Tony was in the office when I got back. We went over to the EB side and started to tear down some guns. I got one apart by lunch.

Afternoon
Tony let me go to a pre-shutdown meeting for EBW4. They're putting in new equipment that will take about two weeks starting this weekend. There's a lot to be done with all the panels, cages, and blowers. After that, we went back over to the guns. I got "my gun" looking pretty sharp so far. I still need to wash an insulator and a ring before it can get reassembled.

Day 20

Morning
Tony was out all day on his way up to Alaska. I started the day by working on drawings for the stirring coils and S8. My goal was to get prints done so I could be ready to go with approvals next week. I made it through all of them including the panel, the schematics, and the two for S8 now that it's done.

Afternoon
I read all the documentation that Tony had on the upgrade for the EB welders. I found some ISA's for the Logix 1100 as well. It looks like the new Logix will talk, via ethernet, to the VIM module, which is connected directly to DeltaV. Reading some of that stuff made the setup for 13 and 14 more clear. I'm not sure what the next step will be, but Tony probably does.

Day 19

Morning
I worked on the updates for the stirring coil drawings more. Started and nearly completed the terminal drawing. Added in all the components with detailed labels for building the strip. Dean was having the liner changed on a die block for the HPM press so we got to watch that being changed out. Not very eventful, but that's a good thing.

Afternoon
I went across the street to see when the next shutdown for S8 would be, and everything came together. The electricians were just finishing putting the buttons in, and the operator was pumping down, so I hauled back over to get the laptop. We got the program on and working once we tied the grounds of the two input modules together. Now the buttons have a nice little 1/4 second debounce and center the beam perfectly. That project should be finished.

Day 18

Morning
Made some updates to the drawing sets that I've been working on. Tony showed me the Rosemont system and drawings in the control room, then we traced the outputs for the stirring coils for #9 and #10. I started looking up drawing numbers and finding old prints to see what needs to be updated and what the old drawings are. I found a mistake on the labeling for #13 ARC.

Afternoon
More updates to drawings. Went and spent some time looking at the crucible cleaner. The settings for the flow limiters were messed up, so they took the time to reset them. Afterwords, Tony showed me the feeds for #9 and #10 that are up above EBW 6. The units themselves are nasty, but it's fun to climb up to them.

Day 17

Morning
Spent some time digging through Oracle for the PO on the E3's for 13 and 14 ARC. No luck. Drove over to S8 to have a look at the panel to ensure that the IO I used in the updates are actually open. When I got back I updated the drawings to reflect all the changes. Took a printout over to Jim for his guys to use. Also got a picture of the stirring coils so that I can finish that drawing. I worked on those for a little while.

Afternoon
Took the afternoon off for my birthday.

Day 16

Morning
I started the day by checking on S8. The operator said that the sticks were more responsive (faster to move), but it was fine. After the maintanence meeting I took a look at the recycle wash station with Tony and worked on some CAD drawings. Phil had a small brainstorm in Dean's office before lunch.

Afternoon
I went over to the stock room to look for S8 push buttons. The price was too similar to North Coast, so I drove down there and picked up three new ones. We took them over to Jim. Tony was looking at some alarm/shutdown ladders from VAR 4 I think (one of the old medium furnaces). I updated the S8 program to use the input from push buttons. I need to load that onto S8 and check to ensure the inputs arn't being used by some junk.

Day 15

Morning
There was the big quartly review this morning. Wally and Matt gave presentations to Phil, and other high ups about the projects that had been completed in the last three months as well as safety records, inventory, etc. After that I sat in on a few meetings like the guys from Industrial systems making the automated unloader.

Afternoon
We went over to S8 and loaded my program. At first I had to make a few changes and fix a bug or two. Most of the issues came from the previous author of the ladders. After a few adjustments and examinations, we determined that the PLC is only operating between ±5 volts (±16384 in a register). Once those changes were in place it ran great. No going off the screen, no roll over. We made some adjustments to the Kepco's so I'll need to go and ask the operators what they think on Monday.

Day 14

Morning
I continued to update the drawings of the backpanel. Jim was back, so we asked him about S8. We may not even install the push buttons just because it will be a hassle, and they'll be torn out during the remodel. We also met a contractor about recycling helium gas used for backfill. Took a peak inside of VAR 11's stirring coil panel.

Afternoon
Took some more time to work on the CAD drawing. Tony gave me a little tour of the alloy prep room, then we went to a meeting about the automated system. The prep makes much more sense after seeing the line of powders and pellets getting pressed into a cup. They are going to try to recalibrate auto mode for the scales.

Day 13

Morning
Most of the morning was spent working on the CAD drawing of the backpanel. I found a few more vendor supplied drawings, but a lot of them needed to be replicated by me. I drew a shunt and a few other small parts. After throwing the parts list on there, it was about lunch time. There was also a saftey meeting.

Afternoon
Tony didn't get a chance to work on S7, so we got to help Greg clean out the gun on EB7. Actually cleaning a gun gives a better understanding of how the unit works. I also walked over to the electric shop to look for push buttons for S8. Hopefully Jim feels better and makes it to work on Thursday.

Day 12

Morning
The morning was spent running from thing to thing. We went over a new transformer that will go up on the roof in December. There were a few things that needed to be checked over on EB7, and Chris wanted to change some WI in Delta V and Rosemont. Once those were updated, we went over the stirring coil setup.

Afternoon
We went out and took a few photos of VAR 13's coil box, then came back to the office and started labeling all of them. From that, I started to make a CAD drawing of the backpanel. We can use that for the electritians to make the stirring coils follow a standard. My parts list got updated as I found items online, especially Allen Bradley stuff.