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.