Paul sorry if things come across negatively,it's always the same when you've been at a job a long time.
as for advice,learn schematic electrical diagrams,learn and learn them,they are the lifeblood of a machine and a good one will make your job a total doddle,a bad or non existent one will make it a nightmare.
i went for years very much like the production lads mentioned above, as a big part of the job was production and I'm sorry to say I did partake in a lot of those bodging activities,shorting out worn auxiliary contacts,holding in reset buttons,covering sensors etc just to keep things moving and I'm also sorry to say that this was actively encouraged,and earned me a lot of money from doing so.
fast forward a few years later when we were put back into centralised maintenance and production was no longer as big a part of my remit and I suddenly realised that I'd not learnt much over the years,as I'd been good at "fixing the machine" but never really finding out why.
sink or swim scenario,luckily I quickly learnt how to swim,as to be fair I had never realised how good the training was plus of course I had picked up a few things along the way.
one of the sparks clocked that I wasn't too good at reading the drawings and spent literally 10 minutes explaining the various features of an electrical diagram to me like how to find where an item was fed from within the drawing,what the little codes below each item meant etc etc.
was the most useful 10 mins of my electrical career to date!!!
id always been involved with plc's but moving to the papermill really put it to the fore as we were using them daily and this then really polished my skills up on it,to the point where I was confident I could find pretty much anything that was thrown at me, but again it all boils down to interpretation of a diagram.
the hard thing a lot of domestic boys find when trying to convert over is that they may not have much knowledge of what drives,plc's,inverters etc actually do when the truth is that you may not always need to know the ins and outs of a particular bit if kit more so that "we have the correct voltage/start conditions going in but nothing coming out,hence the problem is within the unit".
its about being quick to diagnose an issue,so management can make a descision as to what to do.
often in a large environment if a bit of thought went into the initial design of the place then you get a back up system also,so alone on nights chances are you start the standby pump other than replacing it by yourself having a nightmare cos cupboards with tools are locked away etc only accessible by dayshift managers etc.
its all about lateral thinking,proving out what your doing and standing by your results.
the amount of boys I've seen rushing to change a big motor cos its tripped out three or four times when they've not even carried out basic checks is astounding to me,not checking basics like balance,contactor continuity/resistance,even going down to the motor,having a sniff,pulling the cover off and removing tails to double check the motor itself is ok,scary.
the apprentice I was working with before I left the mill got caught on an easy to miss fault.
a hydraulic lift had gone out to have the rams refurbed and came back on our shift to be refitted.
bear in mind it had sat outside for 3 months in the rain,the motor did look a bit rough.
he reconnected it,lovely job too but it kept going slow and tripping on up.
we both agreed it seemed like it was "single phasing".
belled it out from the panel,motor showing open circuit between red/yellow.isolated,
took cover off,removed tails,tested it again same issue,so we were thinking the motor was u/s.
annoyed he started getting tools out to remove the so called u/s motor.
i took a quick look inside and could see straight away the issue,the small spade connector from the internal windings had snapped off so the wire wasn't making contact with the pole from the incoming supply,he'd obviously tightened it up a bit too much when putting the wires on and that was the fault.
imagine the embarrassment and hassle of swapping that out just for someone in the winding company to say "oh dear,nice easy job for me today!!!".
I'm loving doing it and as a career I'd choose it over hacking walls and connecting up sockets every time.
