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!