The most joyful day of any employee is none other than PAYDAY! Its where all that sweat and hard-work is monetized. I did not requested for any allowance or even asked whether I will be paid at all during the interview so I was not hoping for anything. This afternoon I was told by Miss Goh that I will receive my allowance today! Yaaaaay~!! I'm on cloud nine~! She told me that my allowance is RM350 a month but since I started on the 12th, she gave me two hundred sixty something paid in cheque. My first paycheck! However, I feel quite reluctant to cash it out because it means a lot to me but only a doofus would do that..maybe I'll scan and frame it somewhere in my room just to bring back memories.

Its not the sum of money that counts. Its the feeling of being appreciated that matters. That paycheck is like an indirect way of saying "You've done a good job this month. Keep it up and here's your reward!". I really want to thank my employer especially Mr. James for exposing me to all the meaningful experiences, paying for my lunch and giving allowance without even hinting for any return. Thank you!

Ok that's just half the story for today. Today's activity is an extension of yesterday's activity. More like the advanced chapters of inverters. Me and my collie was asked to learn and troubleshoot some inverter cards. The cards are basically an additional chipset to enable some advanced functions of the inverter. They  are optional and purchased separately depending on the customer's requirements. There are five types if I'm not mistaken. Each card has a specific function like PID control, feedback control, multiple motor control and output display. Here's how it is connected:

And these are some other types of inverter cards:

Towards the evening Mr. James gave me an interesting assignment. He asked me and my collie to output the rpm of the motor to an external display. Quite a challenging task at the beginning because I never knew the inverter has such function. I don't know what or which part in the instruction manual I should refer to. After a few minutes Mr. James came to my desk to check my progress. Then after I started asking questions, Mr. James slowly guided me on which port of the inverter to use and how to setup the inverter to output the values. Here's the setup:

The panel meter is connected to the analog output of the inverter and the value is the quantized and displayed. I think its just like the Analog-Digital Conversion function found in microcontrollers. At first the values at the panel meter was zero point something even when the inverter is activated. I don't know what its displaying but then I figured out that the value at the panel meter can be prescaled. After some calculations, I found the magic number. 3.647. Modified the prescale value and some other functions in the panel meter and presto~ solution found! But the value at the display somehow veers off at low rpm values but dead accurate at mid to high rpm. But that should do. 

The week is over! And so does April. Went back at 5pm but traffic was horrendous! It took me more than 1 hour 20 minutes to reach home. But with that paycheck in my possession (for now), I can still smile at the end of the journey. To all employees out there, Happy Labor Day! Enjoy your paycheck! You deserve it! 

Yes, time is running out! For me, that is. My collie will be leaving the company by the end of next week! I'm not sure whether I have learned enough and I'm not sure whether Mr. James will hire another intern to replace him.

No fieldwork today. Spent the whole day troubleshooting a faulty customer's inverter and a few counter devices. My work is mainly concentrated on the inverter. The inverter was sent to us by post. This inverter requires a 415V AC power supply. The normal household power supply is only 240V so I have to use a transformer to step-up the voltage. For safety reasons, the transformer is hidden inside a box and placed under the table. Here's the picture of the transformer used in this activity:

After the wiring part is done, the inverter is powered up. But after a couple of seconds running in Drive Mode, the overheat protection kicks in and stops the inverter immediately. It seems that the cooling fan of the inverter is faulty. Discarded the fan and modified the wiring. Then the inverter is reset and powered up again. This time the inverter runs smoothly without the overheat problem. This activity confirms that only the fan is faulty and the inverter is perfectly fine. Big save in maintenance cost here. Then Mr. James asked me and my collie to test all the ports of the inverter including the relay ports to spot any flaw in the inverter if there's any. Here's the setup:

The motor is three phase so I have to determine what type of connection to use, either Wye or Delta connection. Since the inverter is powered by a 415V AC, so the proper connection would be the Wye connection. The connection is modified at the top panel of the motor. Its not visible from the picture above.

Mr. James asked me and my collie to test the timer function of the inverter, test the relay outputs and that was it. Went back at 5.15pm and traffic was smooth. 

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. First time I stumbled on this quote was like 15 years ago. Never knew what it meant back then but now realized how true it is in real life. Being an engineer is never easy. As far as the sky if compared with the typical 9 to 5 clerical desk job. The working environment is constantly changing and  gets tougher as you get better. This is what I experienced today. 

As usual I arrived in Puchong at 8am and had breakfast nearby (office opens at 9am) but today I found a new "lepak" (hangout) place near the office, at the mosque. The mosque is very new. Less than a year old I presume. Or maybe less than 6 months because its not on Google Maps and the interior is very new. Its situated at the hilltop overlooking Puchong city. Its very serene and peaceful at the mosque. I updated my logbook at the mosque and relaxed myself after an hour of driving. Here's the view from my hangout spot:

On the contrary, today is far from relaxing. Went out the whole day and feeling exhausted right now. In the morning Mr. James brought us to revisit the food factory in Shah Alam to install a counter device. Its the same factory that has a clean room I mentioned last week. This time we have back-up that is the technician from the company that makes the counter that we are going to install. But still, it took them a few hours to figure out the problem and rectify it. I did learn some new things along the way.

Then we went for lunch. Mr. James brought us to Mc Donalds for lunch!! Thanks a million Mr. James! You are so kind!!

After enjoying our meals, without further a due, we went to revisit the furniture factory in Kepong to install and troubleshoot two inverters. This time all the wiring, programming and installation is done by me and my collie. Most of the wiring part is done by my collie. Its quite confusing with all that wire inside the control panel. I find it difficult to determine which wire in the control panel controls the relay, motor and the switch. I guess that I'm not learning fast enough. Like I said, when you get better, the job gets more difficult. Unfortunately I damaged one of the potentiometer but lucky me, Mr. James has brought a compatible potentiometer and I have to replace it with his potentiometer. Sorry Mr. James!  I seriously hope that this will be the first and the last of such incident! Not done yet, we have to make sure the motors controlled by the inverters work in accordance with the customer's needs. After a few program codes and wiring, the factory supervisor is satisfied (finally!). Arrived at the office at 7.30pm and I arrived home at 8.06pm. Was speeding despite the hectic traffic..can't wait to get home!

Sorry for the late update, was busy figuring out the traffic light program. Nothing much to report anyway. Went out for fieldwork in after lunch and that was it. Now the full story.

In the morning I continued trying the traffic light program. Worked on two traffic light system. Only have one issue before I can proceed to the third and the last traffic light. But this one issue really gets my head spinning. Tried a lot of method but when implemented, the whole sequence is disrupted because most of the variables or switches are dependent on each other. When I change this, that switch will not function and so on. Or is it that my approach to the problem is wrong because PLC programming is not my cup of tea? PIC18 and C programming is quite straight forward. You really have to consider more than three things at once in PLC programming.

After lunch Mr. James brought me and my collie to install the INVT inverter in a plastic manufacturing factory at Semenyih. Went pass UNITEN on the way to the factory. Oh, the memories! Ok back to the story. Me and my collie installed and programmed the inverter to meet the customer's specifications and requirements. That was a breeze. Learned new things about a few functions of the inverter and its done. The factory technician seem to be satisfied with our work. Job well done. 

Then we went to factories around Semenyih to collect some faulty items from the customer and that was it. Sorry no pictures for today. Getting lazy to snap pictures lately.

A brand new week, brand new adventure awaits! Can't wait to explore them all!

Today's traffic was a breeze. Most of the traffic lights are green. Slowed down but still arrived at Puchong before 8am. Speaking of traffic lights, today is all about them, literally! As soon as the office was opened, i was given my first assignment by Mr. James. Its about PLC! I was tasked to design a PLC program to control four traffic lights that runs sequentially. PLC is quite an alien to me. Have only been exposed to it briefly in Control Systems subject. Learned about it on the web but quite a challenge for me to comprehend it.

Like I said before, it uses the ladder diagram to program it. Its TOTALLY different from the usual C++, assembly and Boolean Algebra programming. Yes one would need to construct the flowchart prior to program using any language listed above but converting a flowchart to a ladder diagram is tougher than I thought! Before I go further, lets refresh on what a PLC is.

PLC is a replacement of a myriad of relays that controls a machine. Think of it like a million transistor cramped into a single integrated circuit. The transistors represent relays and the IC is the PLC. Except that a single PLC device has very limited input and output relays. A PLC can come from many different brand such as Omron, Siemens, Toshiba and Schneider. Each brand has its own software for programming but the technique does not differ much from each other. Mostly the only difference is the interface. Today I'm using PLC from Schneider and the name of the program bundled with it is ZelioSoft 2.

The first moments was extremely difficult for me. I have no idea what to do, what this symbol stands for, how to simulate or in short, I know NOTHING!! but that never stopped me. I remember there's one quote posted somewhere in UNITEN that goes something like this, "The purpose of education is for the student to educate themselves". That quote kept me going. I'm not just going to stare at the monitor hoping that I will magically understand something! Lets try something out!

After a few minutes fiddling with the icons, I started to go, "Oooooooooooo macam tu rupanya...". With additional help from Mr. James, I begin to understand the logic of each icons and what they do. Vital key statements from Mr. James like "To activate this you must have the coil", "When this coil is on it will activate this switch.." assisted in my understanding tremendously. The help files are a great help too. Here's what the program looks like and what I have done so far:

With trial and error through the simulator, I slowly find a suitable program sequence to get a desired output sequence. So far I've almost successfully completed the first two traffic lights. Still have a few issues to solve before moving on to the third and the fourth traffic light. To me this is about the toughness of the MicroP subject. Thankfully I managed to learn a lot about it in just one day.

Today I learned two key attributes an engineer must acquire that is to be able to solve a problem with very limited information and resources, and to be able to learn new things quickly using whatever means available. 

Yes, thank you Captain Obvious! Of course two brains are better than one lonely brain! Today my collie didn't show up for work! I was quite lonely today..huhu..well not for long. Today is full of meaningful activities. Started off the day by learning a new component. The "Pilot Lamp". The pilot lamp is normally used to indicate if there's any fault in the machine. Its like an LED on steroids because it uses either 24VDC or 240VAC to power it. In my case it is used to see the state of the output of the SSR. I connected them to the output of the solid-state relay (SSR). Remember I mentioned about SSR last week? Below is how the SSR looks like. At the end of this assignment I learnt how to connect the pilot lamp. The connection is shown below. Its not clearly visible though.

Today Mr. James brought me around Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya to deliver some stuffs to the customer. Then we went to Giant Hypermarket near UNITAR. Guess what? Mr. James "belanja" me KFC at the hypermarket! Wow what a great employer! Thanks a lot Mr. James!!

Then we revisited the food factory in Shah Alam again to look at the counter. Its the same machine that I described on Day 8. Apparently the relay mechanism under the table that controls the motor and the relays are not synchronized with the other two relay mechanism. I managed to set the counter such that the open-close-open-close rate of the clamper is synchronized with the other two clampers but somehow the relays that controls the motor and something else under the table had a different on-off pattern than the rest. Quite a stressful moment I would say because I was given a time limit by Mr. James and I fail to solve the problem. But its all part of the challenge of being an engineer. Feels great to have experienced such a situation.

Then we went to an LED and semiconductor manufacturing factory to inspect their UPS system. Too bad the UPS system is outside of the factory, away from the manufacturing plant. I wish to see the doping process of a semiconductor and how to fabricate the LED. Ok back to the story. The UPS is used to control the factory's compressors. There are so many compressors around all the size of a car! I wonder why they need such a big compressor. At the control panel I saw BIG and THICK wires! Its the thickness of the rope used in "tarik tali" competitions. It is used to carry a whopping 1200 Amps of current! Those amps not only kill, it will fry the unlucky fellow in moments!

The compressors are located in an isolated room outside of the manufacturing plant. Its very noisy and hot inside the room with all that compressors heating up and the high level of noise they generate. Truly an uncomfortable place to work at. Lucky I was in the room for a short period of time. Once the UPS is wired, the compressor (the one controlled by the UPS) is powered up. The sound of the compressor powering up is melodious. Its like a Lamborghini engine being powered up but the noise is a lot louder and lasts longer. Very nice melody.

Today I saw two UNITEN students on the road! One in LDP near the big Western Digital Factory. I can't recall the guy's name but he's driving a black saga aeroback plate number WHP3090. He looks quite stressed maybe because the highway was jam-packed at that time. The other one on my way back home at Kewajipan intersection. I don't know this guy but I always see his car in UNITEN. He's driving a green satria plate number MAM 11. I know this car because of the plate number. Very unique.

The week's over! Time to rest. But I feel like going out tomorrow. Maybe to OneUtama or The Curve just to look around and buy some stuffs. Its been a while since the last time I went shopping.. Yes you read correctly. Shopping. Women are not the only ones holding many shopping bags in the Megamall you know!

Thursday already? I still felt like Tuesday! Still have that "Monday Blues" kind of feeling. What makes me nervous in this internship is that I don't know what to expect whether there will be any fieldwork today, what kind of assignments Mr. James will give me today, what to eat for lunch..everything is unpredictable. Its not a routine. Totally different from lecture week. The timetable is fixed, lunch hour is fixed, even sleep time is fixed. Its quite a challenge to change this routine-based mindset. But its a good thing actually as engineers have to work on odd hours and often given weird assignments.

In the morning I did some troubleshooting to the inverter. But today I learnt something new about RELAYS. This type of relay has four "contacts". I think I have discussed this somewhere in my blog. But this time I learnt how to use them to access specific functions of the inverter. Each relay has two types of contacts, the "normally close" and "normally open" contacts. To access a specific function in an inverter when the inverter is powered on, connect the "normally open" contact so that when the relay receives power, the contact moves to the "normally close" contact and turns on the feature that is accessed by the relay. You may not understand this but nevermind. I'm just recalling what I learnt this morning. The relay that I used looks very close to this:

In the process of learning that, I discovered that I have made many silly mistakes before. Remember the drawing I did yesterday? There's a mistake in one of the measurements. Then I discovered I copied something wrongly, and did not learn some important things from my collie. When asked a simple question from Mr. James, I answered wrongly. 

Mistakes, humans are prone to it. I realized that when you have made a mistake and say to your boss "But Sir, everyone make mistakes...", you can get fired! Yes we all make mistakes but the question is, "How often you make them?". Mistakes can be costly to the company. It can humiliate you as well. I seriously hope that I will not damage any inverters or other expensive components due to improper or incorrect wiring. 

After lunch Mr. James brought us "jalan-jalan" around Puchong, Bukit Jalil and the outskirts of Shah Alam to deliver some stuffs to the customer. Before the trip ends, we revisited the rubber manufacturing factory in Shah Alam to inspect a faulty inverter and a set of proximity sensor. I have visited this factory before on Day 1 of my diary. There I saw a motor about the size of a Perodua Kancil. Its huge! I wonder how much power is needed to run it! There's also a gear system attached to it.

That's it for today. Went back at 6pm and it was raining. The statement "asal hujan je KL mesti jam" in Day 7 of my blog is true! The trip back took longer than usual, about 1 hour 10 minutes!

Today's traffic is a lot better than yesterday. Arrived in Puchong at 8am, 15 minutes earlier than I usually do. Had breakfast at the same restaurant since I started the internship. I usually order teh tarik for my drink. So often that I don't have to tell the waiter what I want to drink anymore. As soon as I entered the restaurant, I heard the waiter yelled "teh tarik satu!" to the people in the kitchen. Nice!

Around 9.30am Mr. James gave my my first assignment of the day. He asked me to DRAW some sort of connector complete with measurements. I'm bad in drawing especially when it involves 3D. Tried my best to draw the connector and this is what I did:

I know its not very nice and accurate but its good enough. Did not expect this kind of assignment at all! But its great to have manage to draw it as close as possible with the real thing. All part of the learning process.

Learnt a very important lesson today. Its closely related to the title. Here's the story. We revisited this food manufacturing factory in Shah Alam (its the one that has a "clean room" that I mentioned on day 6) to install a counter. The problem is that one of the "clampers" (not sure the exact name) of the machine is not running concurrently with each other. The machine looks very close to this:

Basically the clampers were controlled by the three counters. Each counter controlling each clamper. Supposedly when the whole thing is turned on, Every counter starts counting. The clamper will open-close-open-close continuously and concurrently with each other as the counter counts and resets. But the right clamper open-close rate is slower than the other two. That's why we were called in. We installed two types of counter but it does not work. Tried every operation mode but none suit the situation. Tried a lot of other methods but did not work. The workers there even tried to help us by cleaning the inner mechanism of the clamper.The factory technician then came in to inspect and repair the mechanism that controls the movement of the clamper but to no avail.

At the brink of giving up, Mr. James asked me to remove the new counter and SWITCH the middle counter and the possibly faulty counter. After all that sweat re-wiring the two counters with the help of my collie its done. (Thanks man!) Then the machine is powered up. To our surprise, the three clampers were back in sync! I was speechless! We've been working for this problem for two days! Turns out the solution is VERY SIMPLE! Just SWITCH the two counters! If only I could come up with the idea a little sooner..

In engineering, the solution to a difficult problem may not be very difficult after all. The engineer just need to analyze the situation or problem from many different perspective and think outside the box. This is a critical skill that engineers MUST acquire and I am thankful that I got the opportunity to learn this very important lesson.

Yup..just another day in the office. Nothing much to report today. I was only revisiting yesterday's problems (counter, inverter stuff like that). Me and my collie went for a short visit in a screw and bolt (if I remember correctly) manufacturing factory in Puchong. Went back at 6.00pm and arrived home an hour later.

Today's traffic is unusually busier than the usual days. I don't know why. I came out only 10 minutes earlier than I usually do but the traffic is unlike any other days especially on the Federal Highway. Lucky me I'm not using that highway to get to Puchong. Its not raining though. Speaking about raining, I wonder why people say "asal hujan je KL mesti jam teruk" (KL roads are always jam-packed when it rains)? Theoretically when it rains people tend to stay indoors but the statement suggests otherwise. Trivial statement but its true! 

I heard from the radio that traffic summonses will INCREASE from RM300 to a whopping RM1000!!! Hope its not true..then what's the point of having 120km/h+ in the speedometer?? For decoration or just to show that your car can go that fast??

Enough with the rants. This is a diary not a heated debate! Anyway, during lunch there's this cat that slept beside me. The cat doesn't seem to be bothered with the noisy lunch hour atmosphere in the restaurant. It just kept sleeping. The cat is so cute! I want to hug and pamper it but people will think I'm crazy so I just took a photo of that cat.

All this while I don't feel very helpful to Mr. James because I don't know a lot of things about automation products. Most of the technical part is done by my collie and the technician. At 5pm just now a customer called in to ask about how to setup the inverter so that it operates like how he wants. After a few minutes analyzing the instruction manual, I found a solution. The best part is, it works! Explained how I did it to Mr. James and he seem to agree. Yay! I did something productive today! Now I can slowly eliminate that "unhelpful" feeling. Need to learn quick though, my collie will be leaving the company in less than a month time!

Monday blues..every worker has it. The weekend is never enough to relax the mind, body and soul after 5 days of hard labor. Is it just me or time seem to flow faster during the weekends? If only Mr. Einstein lived a little longer and invent the time machine..

Today is mainly about rotary encoder and counters. I was asked to test the newly purchased counter device and a rotary encoder. The rotary encoder is used as the input to the counter. Basically, a rotary encoder is a kind of motor that converts its relative angular position to digital signal that is then used to precisely measure length, angle and robotic components. In my case, the angular position is output-ed at the counter. Here's the setup to test both the counter and encoder:

First and foremost, read the manual. The reason why is that I need to know the circuit connections and how to setup the counter to meet the customer's specifications. What I meant by setup is the number of decimal value, enabling the memory function and some other parameters. One revolution of the encoder equals to 1000 units at the counter. Once that value is reached, the counter resets. One can easily understand the application of a rotary encoder and a counter by looking at the picture below: (taken from the manual)

Briefly, it is used to precisely cut a preset length value of paper/sheet/whatever you can think of. The rotation of the encoder that correlates to the length can be easily calculated by applying some formula (not shown here). The purpose of the counter is to set and display the length values.

After lunch, Mr. James brought me and my collie to a factory in Kapar, Klang to deliver some stuffs to the client. Then we went to a food manufacturing factory in Shah Alam to install a counter. To enter the manufacturing department, visitors (me) must wear a safety jacket, hair cover, face mask and a specialized plastic bag to cover the shoe. All provided by the factory. Then before entering the department, we have to go through a small chamber. Inside the chamber were air blower that blows off any dirt from us. Its like in the movies where there's a "clean room" where anyone who wants to enter must go through the cleaning chamber. Too bad  I have no pictures of myself wearing all those stuff. Somehow I feel like a doctor wearing that face mask and the safety jacket..

On the way to the factory we went through Section 7 of Shah Alam. Guess what I saw? Mansions! Oh my God those mansions are HUGE! Some were as big as a mini shopping mall! They must be worth tens of millions each! I wonder what these people do for a living! The mansions kept me drooling..well not physically but mentally of course..wouldn't want to smear Mr. James car with my drool..Should have taken a photo of those mansions. That is someone's dream that came true! Quite an inspirational view!

Inspirational indeed. The owners must have gone through some hard times before. Something like what I'm going through now. If they can make it why not me? THAT is still a long way to go though...but I'll get there..god willing..

That's it! I'm done for the week! If I were to sum up my experience so far in one word, that word would be CHALLENGING. Everything is moving very fast around me. It all depends on myself to keep up with the pace. During normal lecture week the lecturer may only be able to cover 1 chapter but in my internship, its like three chapters a day. Chapter 1: Inverters. Ten minutes later, Chapter 2: UPS troubleshooting. Then in the middle of it, Chapter 3: Ethics 101- How to Answer a Phone Call, and the list goes on. But most of the time its fun to train myself to multitask and learn quickly. The stressful part is when I was given a simple instruction and don't know what to do. Like I said before, time flows like water. No, more like a rapid river. If you're too slow, it'll drag you with it and you'll drown if you can't recover quickly.

Alright, enough with the metaphors. Today Mr. James brought me to a wax factory in Batu Caves. Great! Another fieldwork! But this time its just me and Mr. James. The factory just ordered an inverter from Mr. James and they need us to install it and get the motor running. The installation and wiring part is done by one of Mr. James' technicians. Its very technical, I would not be able to do it anyway. But I did observe and learn some new info like how to drill a very large hole to a steel plate. And I did help the technician to hold the ladder, pack his drill and instruments and some petty non-technical stuff.

One thing I like working with Mr. James is that he'll never let me sit and do nothing. He always try to find something for me to do and be part of the maintenance process. When the installation part is done, Mr. James asked me to PROGRAM the inverter. Lucky me its one of those Sanken Inverters which I am already familiar with. A few parameters is set to meet the customer's specifications. After accessing a few program codes of the inverter it is done and the motor is ready to rock run.

After a few tweaks on the frequency, the motor is running at the correct speed and as stable as a rock. The current is reasonably low. Then everyone is happy. Guess what? I get to teach one of the factory's high-ranking officer or the supervisor or something on how to change the speed of the inverter! What a great experience! At the end of the day, everyone is happy and we all go home dirty and tired but in utter satisfaction. Make your boss happy and you'll be well rewarded.

The end of the first week marks the end of my employer's first impression towards my attitude, level of knowledge and trustworthiness. On the third day I already got a complement from Miss Goh that goes "wah, awak sangat rajin..." that is the kind of remark that drives me to perform better. It will never slip my mind. After all the things I've done be it in or out of the office, I am certain now that I'm on the right track to become a fully competent engineer and I strongly believe Speed Drives and Automation Sdn. Bhd. can take me there. Thank You Sifu!

There, I said it! I am still so far away from being even the basic engineer. Me and my collie spent most of the day installing an inverter in a furniture factory in Kepong but this time, WE are the technicians. Today's visit gives me the REAL experience of being an enginner.

As soon as we arrived at the factory, I was asked to read the circuit diagram of a relay. This relay has 14 pins and 4 relays built into a package with three pins each. The two other pins are supposed to be connected to a power supply. It is then mounted to a connector box to ease the wiring process. The relay and connector box looks something like this:

Then Mr. James asked me to connect the power supply input and one of the relay input. Oops..which wire to connect and where to connect them? Feels kind of embarrassed not to know such a basic thing. My collie is way ahead doing some soldering work. Mr. James then guided me on what to do. Ooo so that's how it is! 

Next we move on to installing the inverter to a machine to upgrade the motor speed control. The inverter used this time is different than yesterday. The programming method is different. Did some drilling work and lots of wire stripping work. By the time I was done it was 1.30pm and we went for lunch nearby. Again Mr. James was paying for my nasi campur. (Thanks a lot Mr. James!)

What a great lunch! Ok now get back to work! I wanted to connect my stripped wire to the inverter terminals but Mr. James stopped me from doing that. I'm suppose to clamp the wire first. I never knew such procedure existed. Here's the brief conversation between me and Mr. James:

Such a basic thing and I never knew about it! There's a lot that I don't know! Thank you Mr. James for patiently teaching me! There's some other tasks that Mr. James told me to do but I don't know where to start. Somehow I feel that I'm not being very helpful today. As an engineer, we must know exactly what our superior wants and MUST be able to know what and how to do it flawlessly. This is what I learnt today. 

Went back a bit late today. Still a long way to become a competent engineer. I hope I can keep up.

Third day in the office..everything starts to feel like a routine. Starting to get used with the usual morning traffic jam. I wonder how my parents can survive traffic like this every single day!

Today is all about inverters. Not just on how to use it, but to program it as well. But the programming method is nowhere near programming a PIC18. Its much simpler than that. And its kind of fun too. I'll tell you how to program an inverter in a short while. Here's the setup to test an inverter:

The green box is the Sanken's Samco e-Series Inverter. This is the inverter that i was trying to explain in Day 1 of my blog. It is connected to the control box. If you have read my previous post, the control box can function as a power supply but that feature is not used here. Only the six switches on the casing is used. Then it is connected to the three-phase motor. This is the motor that the inverter is controlling. There's a potentiometer too but its not pictured here. Now the programming part. See the control buttons and the display panels? That's the keyboard and the monitor. There are many parameters that we need to initialize and test. This is where the manual comes in. In it are codes to access specific functions like setting switch 1 to reverse mode, set switch 3 frequency, restoring factory setting and many more. Its fun to modify the frequency and see the speed of the motor changing after setting the switch! Got to be careful though, a customer had paid for that!

One key attribute an engineer should have is FLEXIBILITY. After I'm done playing with my new toy learning how to test the inverter, Mr. James gave me and my collie to test another inverter but from a different brand. Now the whole process starts all over again. The programming codes are different so we have to familiarize ourselves with the new command format. Great! Now I can program almost any brand of inverter! But please give me the manual as well..

No fieldwork today, but Miss Goh told me that we'll be going out tomorrow..my collie tought me some basics about programming a PLC and wrap up the day. (Thanks man!)

After three days here I'm beginning to reconsider what major I'm going to take. Initially I planned to major in Computer Engineering but now I feel like taking Control and Automation Engineering since my internship mainly deals on PLC and automation products and i'm beginning to fall in love with it like it!

Feels great to have survived the first day! Starting to get used to everything. No more "What if I'm lost in the highway" dilemma. Now I know where are the places to eat, pray, convenience stores and petrol stations. Best of all, everything is nearby! Its very convenient to work in this part of Puchong. Slowly I'm starting to develop a map of Puchong in my mind. 

As soon as I entered the office, me and my collie were given an assignment that is to troubleshoot a faulty customer's motor driver. Remember the servo motor I mentioned on my first interview? We are revisiting that problem. Forget the motor, our task is to troubleshoot the faulty motor driver. Firstly disconnect the CW (clockwise) ports of the faulty driver, connect to a working driver (the small silver box), connect that to a power supply and a brand new stepper motor (the smaller motor). Then both drivers are turned on but the rate of speed change of the motor is not uniform. My collie suggested that the root of the problem is in the faulty driver's internal circuitry.

Not long after that, we are asked to troubleshoot a newly arrived factory counter device ordered by a customer. First and foremost, we read the instruction manual and figure out the circuit connection and the required power supply. Then we started to connect the main power supply, proximity sensor and the solid-state module. Allow me to explain each device one by one. First up, the counter. The counter is the normal counter that some of you have come across in Digital Logic Design Lab. It has two outputs that will turn on or off depending on the preset counter value (at what counter value you want it to turn on). We connected the proximity sensor to provide an input signal to the counter so that the counter will start counting when the sensor is triggered and when the preset limit is met, the appropriate output will be triggered. The sensor has 3 wires, black, brown and blue. Black is connected to the signal port, Brown for input voltage and blue for grounding. Thirdly, the solid state module. It is actually a relay that provides the needed 12V for the output of the counter. I can't recall the exact function. Will explain later.

After lunch Mr. James invited me and my collie to go for another fieldwork (Yay~). This time its in an air conditioned factory in Shah Alam to troubleshoot a touch-screen PLC machine (sorry no pictures, no camera is allowed!). I learnt that the programming method is almost similar to programming a PIC18, you must have the interface software, serial cable and/or USB cable and the PLC machine. Users are able to download and upload a program to and from the PLC. But the programming is different than what I learn in MicroP Lab. Instead of using assembly programming or C++, the ladder diagram is used. Quite complicated I would say. But I was there just to observe the maintenance process. Still far from competence!

Then Mr. James brought us towards the west side of Selangor as far as Pulau Indah to deliver some stuffs to the customer. Mr. James was driving, at the rear seat it feels like "balik kampung" seeing the rural landscapes of Klang and Pulau Indah. Its good to have such view as it relaxes your mind after all that hard work. At the end of the trip, Mr. James "belanja us makan at mamak restaurant". (pardon the english!) Thanks Mr. James!

Time to prepare for tomorrow. Still have not finished writing yesterday's part of the logbook..need to stop procrastinating! But what the heck, its been a great day! There's still tomorrow and the day after..

"All work but no play makes Jack a dull boy". Not sure the exact idiom but you get the point. I was in for my first outside-office assignment. Me and my collie went to a factory in Shah Alam after lunch with Mr. James. Its my first time being inside a big  factory. Safety posters are everywhere! Machinery systematically and strategically placed inside the factory utilizing every inch of space without compromising worker's safety and comfort. Complex maze of ventilation ducts overhead efficiently channels unwanted hot and hazardous air outside. Working in a factory doesn't look so bad after all!

We were there to service the motor speed control device in one of the machines in the factory.  The machine is very long, about 70 meters long. Its like a very long oven but instead of trays, it has conveyor belts running along the length of the machine. The speed controller of the conveyor speed is controlled at three stations. The speed controller is connected to the main control panels which consists of PLC and relays. I know my explanation is a little difficult to understand. Let me draw the machine instead.

The motor that runs the conveyor belts seem to be faulty. It occasionally decreases speed without a reason. The most likely problem would be the controls in the PLC. The huge PLC control panel is not drawn here because its too difficult to draw and the factory does not allow photo-taking. I was there to observe only because I don't know what to do anyway. One of Mr. James' technicians came to troubleshoot the PLC system. I saw him using the clamp meter to measure current while adjusting the speed of the conveyor.

Its done at about 5.40pm. Arrived home at 6.50pm with moderate traffic.

That's it for now, too sleepy to write or recall anything already. Still haven't wrote anything yet in the logbook. Maybe tomorrow. Wait, its already tomorrow..Oh well..

All in all, a well spent day. Lots of new information and experience gained. Sifu I want more!

The hardest part in every endeavor is to start. Like composing this essay, the hardest part is the introduction. But once done, everything felt like a breeze. Did not slept well last night, kept thinking what is going to happen today. Pondering with questions like "What if I got lost in the highway and can't reach the office on time?", "What if I wrongly connect a wire and damage the machine due to lack of knowledge?", "Do I have sufficient knowledge to survive tomorrow's assignments?", "What type of assignments will Mr. James give me?" and many more. In order to prevent that, I was heavily "armed" with all the books I have, hand drawn maps complete with landmarks (Petronas, 7-11, mosque, restaurants, etc) and two separate alarm clocks to make sure I wake up at  6am and depart before 7am to avoid heavy traffic.

Departed at 6.50am. Missed an intersection in Puchong but due to the "high level of detail" of my hand drawn map, I was able to find my way around and arrived at 7.30am and had breakfast nearby. Promised Mr. James that I will arrive before 9am. Wow! I was 90 minutes early!

My first assignment, I was given an instruction manual about an inverter. This inverter is used to control the speed of an induction motor by varying the voltage and/or frequency of the supply voltage. It falls under Variable Frequency Drive or specifically the VVVF (Variable Voltage Variable Frequency Drive). Basically this is what the inverter looks like, in 2D: (used Power Point to make this picture)

I learn about how to assemble and dissemble it, wire connections, the proper way to ground several similar inverters, circuit terminals and how to troubleshoot the machine. There are several programming codes each with a specific function. The programming functions are accessible by pressing a few buttons. The explanation is too long. More about this later. Oh, I forgot to mention, there's another intern in the office. He's in for one month already.

Then me and my collie were given another task, to troubleshoot a customer's UPS Device. No its not the courier service, its the abbreviation of Uninterruptible Power Supply. Its basically a backup battery for utility machines in the event of power failure or blackout. These are the instruments used: 

First we have to find out what is the maximum resistance for this VR using Fluke 112 Series Multimeter. It turns out to be 89.0ohms. Then we have to construct the simple power supply - load circuit to test the UPS. Using the Fluke Clamp Meter, (looks pretty weird, no?) the current is measured to see if the UPS is stable or not under any load conditions.

All this was before lunch hour. We went for a fieldwork in the afternoon. I will describe my experience in Part 2 of this day. 

Sifu I learnt a lot!

Only three days left! A bit jealous though, seeing most of my friends almost completing their first week of internship..Only four days yet so many interesting real-life problems faced, worked on and solved. So many places explored while I'm still here, at home reading hilarious replies on my favorite forum, Lowyat.net. Just can't wait to get that hands-on experience and most importantly, to learn. I wonder what Mr. James has in store for me..

Time flows like water. Too much of it, and you'll "drown" in a pool of entertainment and fantasy. Too "shallow", and there will be no fish to reel. Oops..excuse the metaphors. I get too carried away by my imagination of words sometimes. But hey, that's what engineers need right? IMAGINATION. The bottom line is, time management is crucial. Too much free time and you'll tend to do something not beneficial, like what I did these few days. But not quite, Lowyat.net do have informative news and info. And the news is often faster and less biased than local television news. On the contrary, too little time, and you will not be able to complete your assignments and do anything productive.

Went to UNITEN this afternoon to submit the acceptance letter and borrow some books from the library. The EC Internship Coordinator is on seminar, Dr. Azree went to see "kelip-kelip" or fireflies according to his PA. But I need to get this acceptance letter signed by either of them NOW! Lucky me Dr. Azree's PA is kind enough to pass my letter to him later so I don't have to return to UNITEN again. (Thanks!)The two way trip is done in under three hours.

Play time's over. Time to LEARN. Borrowed some books related to inverters and programmable logic which is related to my field of work internship. Just finished reading some PLC basics from the web. Now I know the basics of programming a PLC.

Now I have to start reading about all the things I need for my internship so that I won't be asking too many questions later. 

Let the Learning Process Begin! Sifu please teach me!