The eighth Monday. Waking up in the morning seem a little difficult today after a 3-day holiday. Back to the same 'ol routine.

Seriously, life feels like a big program code! Even when I'm half awake, its automatic! Are we turning into a robot? I hope not.

Anyway, today I learn about two new device. The touchscreen PLC and the door sensor. In the morning its about the touchscreen PLC. Yes, you read correctly. TOUCHSCREEN! Like an iPhone! Well not that sophisticated but close enough. Mr. James just asked me to go through the software so I was not able to power it up and test the touchscreen feature. Too bad. Here's the device. Looks like a tablet PC from this view. Feels like you can surf the internet with that thing!

After lunch I was given the door sensor to test out. We are waiting for the green light from the customer for us to install this device so in the meantime Mr. James asked me to familiarize with the settings and features. Nothing out of the ordinary, its just like a proximity sensor with a brain. The relay is to simulate the door opening and closing. My workstation is quite a mess today because of a BIG display device occupying almost 3/4 of my workstation. Its the big black rectangular thing with white wording.

I just realized that the internship is actually your bootcamp prior to the REAL working life later. I discovered many of my weaknesses through fieldworks and when dealing with customers. I get to test my determination level to the max when installing inverters or troubleshooting a pre-installed ones. This is the time that people forgive you for making mistakes. This is the time where guidance is all around you and readily available. I don't think you'll have all of that after graduating later. 

There's plenty of daily situations that I can use to brush up on my weaknesses especially interpersonal skills. A  skill highly on demand among employers nowadays. Like one of my favorite quotes, "Humans cannot achieve PERFECTION, but there's always room for IMPROVEMENT" I guess I have to really utilize the last few weeks to improve on my weaknesses as much as I can. Indeed, internships can TOTALLY change or enhance a person's personality, way of thinking and of course, intelligence. But that's not all what internships can do to you. To me, at the end of it you'll become a completely different person!

Oops, this is getting too long so I'll stop right here. By the way, I saw on the news that our convoy to deliver goods and supplies to our brothers in Palestine was attacked by our arch nemesis, the Israeli Army. It seems clear that MERCY is not in their dictionary, and so does HUMANE. Maybe they have vocabularies like ARROGANCE, HATE and VIOLENCE on the first few pages of their dictionary. Let us all pray for the safety of our convoy and our fellow brothers in Palestine. I will do a "Solat Hajat" tonight after Isya' prayer. Its the least I can do.

Mr. James went out until 2pm in the afternoon so I've got almost nothing to do today. Mr. James seem to be quite busy after that. On Wednesday I was given a task to search a door sensor and an inverter manual on the internet. Nothing worth to report so I will end this post right here.

Wow what a short post! Seriously, I've got absolutely NOTHING to say this time!

No office work today so this is going to be short. Went out almost 90% of the working hour today.

Something peculiar happened in the morning. BLACKOUT!! Even the restaurant where I had breakfast nearby was affected! According to the neighbor, the blackout started since 12.30am last night! We are helpless without electricity! No internet, no fax, no light and no air-con! Lucky the phone was working. I was lost and don't know what to do because I can't power up anything! Now I realize why big big factories suffer HUGE profit losses because of no electricity. Was at the office until 10.30am but the electricity still did not recover. I wonder what had happened at the substation..

Feeling unproductive, we went out to the Sungai Besi factory to install the photo sensor I mentioned yesterday and to solve that inverter dilemma once and for all. Mr. Alex was there when we arrived at the factory. His task is to install the two sets of photo sensor and I was asked to concentrate on the inverter problem. Recall that the inverter is unable to deactivate when the switch at the inverter is in "OFF" state. The proposed solution was to bypass a relay that connects the switch with another brand new relay to isolate the signals coming from the PLC.

Mr. Alex had taught me how to connect the relay and in fact I have tested his teachings on Day 28 of my blog. Diligently wired the relays inside that dust-infested control panel. Fortunately for me, there was no cockroach in there or otherwise I would freak out and embarrass myself in front of the workers! Occasionally doubted my understanding but Mr. James came and enlightened me with the answers. Did a tiny mistake but later Mr. Alex came and fixed it.

Turned on the big machine to test the new solution. I was very anxious worrying that it might not work. About one minute after the machine runs, its time for the inverter of interest to run and test the new solution. Amazingly it worked! The motor runs and stops when it is supposed to! Problem solved! What a relief! I can sleep well now..

Went to Old Town Kopitiam in Puchong for a drink. This time Mr. James INSISTED that I order a meal. Wow, Thanks Mr. James!!

Still waiting for the visiting lecturer to visit me. Mr. James say that he still did not receive any calls from UNITEN. I just hope that this is not going to be a surprise visit because like I said before, me and Mr. James are like, "macam biskut chipsmore, kejap-kejap ada kejap-kejap tinggal habuk je.." On the other hand, its almost three weeks since my collie left the company. Still waiting for a new collie to assist me in my fieldwork and to fill that loneliness void in me. There's nothing I can do but to wait for both events to occur. The wait is sometimes mentally painful.

No pictures today so this is going to be brief. How I wish that "No Camera Allowed" sign doesn't exist!! How am I supposed to describe what I saw in the factory with bare words! Its too bad that I can't take photos of myself when I was working and upload them on Facebook. And one more thing, how am I going to prove to the lecturers during the presentation later that I've been into all those factories!!

As mentioned yesterday, we went out to inspect and install a new inverter. I went to two factories today. Around 10.30am we went to a label and sticker manufacturing factory in Cheras. Once there, one of the factory officer guided us to a control box where a faulty inverter is located. Plenty of labels and stickers of famous brands are being made here. Eventually we arrive at a very long conveyor that has many sensors, motors and relays along the way. The old italian inverter appears to be overheating so we want to replace it with a new japanese inverter but first we must make sure that it is compatible. The interior of the factory is fully air-conditioned so the work environment is quite comfortable.

Unfortunately for us, we were unable to figure out the terminal connections of the italian inverter because the manual is not available so we went back couple of hours later but will try to solve the problem some other day.

Then Mr. James took me to Old Times Kopitiam near The Mines for lunch!! I was quite awkward to order anything because none of the meals on the menu is below RM5.00! Even the basic nasi lemak with chicken costs RM7.90! Since I'm here and hungry anyway, I ordered the normal nasi lemak and soft drink. Thanks Mr. James!!

Then we went to a three-story pharmacy in Puchong to inspect a faulty door sensor. Mr. James did all the inspection so just I stood there and watch. I wouldn't know what to do anyway. After the inspection is done we went back to the office. Arrived at the office at 4pm. But there's another job for me. I was asked to install two sets of photo sensors at the same Sungai Besi factory I mentioned last week. I went there ALONE but this time the journey was smooth. No more wrong junctions. 

I was supposed to wait for Mr. Alex to help me with the installation. After just five minutes setting foot on that factory, Mr. James called me to say that Mr. Alex is unable to come so I just delivered the sensors to the person in charge and went back home. 

Week number SEVEN! Here we go! Hey, wake up! Its 6.30am! Go and iron your clothes NOW! That tiny voice inside my head won't stop bothering me until I get off that bed! Half awaken, went to the cupboard and took a set of attire and went to the ironing board. Sometimes life feels like a big computer program. The 5 senses act like an input device while the hands and legs outputs the preprogrammed tasks. The brain is obviously the central processing unit. Can somebody come and program my brain to be like Mr. Einstein?

Alright, enough with the nonsense. Today has got nothing to do with inverters, AGAIN! No fieldwork today, just another day in the office. But tomorrow I will definitely go out, according to Mr. James. In the morning I did some filing work, then Mr. James gave me a set of gadgets consists of a switching PSU, weird-looking rotary encoder and its best friend, the counter. Whenever you see a rotary encoder, there's definitely a counter connected to it. Supposedly, when the rotary encoder rotates one unit, the counter will count one unit and resets when it reaches a certain preset value. I may have discussed this on the early days of my blog post. The setup is shown below:

What a funny looking encoder! At first glimpse one may think this is the code-manipulator-thingy of a safe! In fact, it looks just like one! But beware, your eyes can fool you! Ok back to the story. The reason why the switching PSU is needed is because the encoder can only accept 5VDC as input unlike its best friend which can consume the household 230VAC like a hungry beast! In short, when everything is connected properly, the counter will reset when the encoder completes one revolution. 

After lunch Mr. James asked me to play around with the Panasonic PLC. He asked me to program the PLC to control some input device and outputs to a relay. Before he went out, he asked me to connect the photoelectric switch and the relay to the PLC. With the help and guidance of Mr. James I managed to connect them and start work on the programming. The setup is shown below:

Initially I only used a single switch and relay to simplify my program and to start learning slowly. Mr. James went out at 2.30pm so I have until 5.30pm to experiment with the ladder diagram and the PLC. Again I would like to stress out that PLC programming is totally different than PIC18 programming. There's no "code" for a specific task, only "symbols" that can be either ON of OFF. Not to mention the limited types of symbols a ladder diagram can have (sometimes less than 10 symbols) unlike the 77 instructions of a PIC18. For beginners, its tougher than the MicroP subject! But I slowly learn and managed to do a simple input-output program that works.

Went back at 5.25pm today. Traffic was amazing! The journey back took a record-breaking 35 minutes! Normally the drive back took about 50 to 75 minutes. Maybe because coincidentally most of the traffic lights are green along Persiaran Kewajipan. If only life is that easy.. 

Time really flows when you're enjoying yourself! Like I said in the early days of my internship, time flows like a rapid river. But now the "drowning" part is no longer an issue because I am quite used to the nature of work here. Yesterday was quite a historical day for me, now that I've got only 30 days left of my internship and the "activeness" of this blog. Looking back on Day 1, I was like "Err..how to test the inverter??", "Err..what is that, Sir? How to use it??". I was very dependent on my collie but its totally different now, "Ok its done, Sir! Lets power it up!", "I can do that! No problem!" Less question marks, more exclamation marks now in my conversations. No, its not that I am shouting at my boss, just to express my excitement. Ooh, the memories!

Today has got nothing to do with inverters! I learn something new and different today. In the morning, Mr. James asked me to build two PLC cables. He gave me a diagram and the cables needed and left. I took the first few minutes to analyze and understand the diagram. The diagram given to me is exactly this:

The phone cable is given as is so I just need to solder the other end of that cable to a serial connector according to the diagram given. Notice that terminals 7 and 8 needs to be jumped together so I need to figure out how to do that. First, I soldered pins 2, 3 and 5. Not an easy task for beginners like me, I have to strip such tiny wires! Open up your home phone plug and see how puny it is! Then the soldering part. I need at least three hands to get it done easily! For terminals 7 and 8, I cut a small length of a paper clip and solder it at the terminals. Assembled the casing and its FINALLY done! Tested the continuity using the multimeter at the soldered terminals and it worked! ALL of them! What a relief! Otherwise I have to open back the casing and re-solder the wires! Phew~ Job well done! Later in the evening the customer came to collect the cables and some other things he purchased. 

After lunch and Friday prayer Mr. James gave me a DC drive to test it out. The DC drive is powered by either 110VAC or 230VAC and outputs up to 200VDC to run a DC motor. Connected the power cables and the potentiometer and switched it on. With the supervision of Mr. James, I measured the output voltage as Mr. James turned the potentiometer up and down. The voltage fluctuates accordingly (or if connected to a DC motor, its the speed that we are controlling). Everything is ok so I switched it off and pack. Here's the setup:

An indian customer came to pick up the driver and a voltage regulator at 5.30pm. Demonstrated how both devices worked. Also explained to him other features of the DC drive until he is satisfied with my explanations. I went back at 6.30pm after all the demonstration and explanation is done. Like any company's policy, customer is always FIRST so I have to make sure I did everything I could to attain his satisfaction before I can go home.

Now that I have hit the half-way mark, the only way to go now is FORWARD. And I'm looking FORWARD to it! Yesterday's HISTORY, today's a JOURNEY, tomorrow's a MYSTERY! (credits to Mr. Anonymous for this quote)

No fieldwork today so this is going to be a short post. I saw this remote-control like device at the edge of my workstation and wondered what it does and how it works. Out of curiosity I took a photo-electric sensor and plugged it into the device. Teeeeeeet! The buzzer within the device beeps. Ooo so now I know what this device does! It is actually a sensor tester! The buzzer will beep if the sensor is working. Connected it to a faulty proximity sensor and the device is silent, as expected.

The photo-electric switch is actually a proximity sensor but it uses light intensity to detect distance or obstacles. The small red LED behind it will emit light when something opaque (light-impenetrable object) comes near the sensor. The sensor then sends the "ON" signal to the controller for as long as the object blocks the sensor. 

After lunch I tested a customer's Mitsubishi inverter just to make sure its not faulty. This is another variant of the Mitsubishi inverter I learnt last week or two weeks ago. But the manual is in Japanese!! Fortunately the programming is similar to other inverter of the same brand so it is readily available in the laptop. I wonder how the customer is going to understand the manual later..Anyway, here's the picture of the inverter. The input is 420V so I have to use the external transformer to power it up.

Still waiting for a new collie..Getting kind of lonely now. The dispatch boy is often away delivering stuffs to the customer so I have no one to talk to in the office. I'm still in full control of the entire workstation so I try to keep it tidy and organized. The catalog stack on the far side of my workstation is a mess so I tried to build a book stand out of unused styrofoam and box leftovers but I couldn't find an appropriate glue to join them together. Then I got an idea that is to use a very long threaded screw to screw it together! It worked wonders and I even label each section to ease the search of a specific brand of a specific product. Not sure Mr. James will like it but at least the customer can easily know what we sell and the appropriate catalog can be shown to them in an instant!

Yesterday and Monday was the most tiring and stressful days of my internship so far. But the "rain" has to stop eventually and up comes the sunshine. 

There's NO fieldwork today so not much movement and thinking is involved. But still, I have plenty of work to do in the office like soldering the potentiometer, test the customer's voltage regulator device, reorganize the toolbox and ponder about yesterday's Sungai Besi factory problem. Initially we plan to revisit the factory for the third time today but since there's some conveyor problem at the factory, we cannot go there until next week.

In the morning...aaarrggghhh!! I can't recall what I did this morning!! Should have written it down! Lucky I took a picture of a machine. The machine is actually a motor and an inverter bundled together in one package. It was sent to us because the inverter was damaged by some fluid that has entered into the inverter and short-circuited the circuitry inside. The motor is fine so only the inverter is replaced with the exact same model. Below is the picture of the whole machine.

Wired the power cables, motor cables and mounted the inverter onto the base of the motor. After everything is tight, I powered up the motor and inverter for a short test run with the supervision of Mr. James. We only change one program code of the inverter according to the instructions in the motor manual. Everything is running fine so I switched off the machine and prep the machine so that it is ready to be collected by the customer.

After lunch me and Mr. James pondered about the Sungai Besi factory problem. Recall that the problem is that the inverter controlling a motor is unable to deactivate itself after all of the switches on it is turned off. The off signal is coming from an array of relays and a PLC module. Mr. James gave me a similar inverter to simulate the problem. He thinks that the problem lies somewhere in the wiring or relay of the control panel back at the factory so he suggests that I isolate the switch signals with a relay. Great, how do I connect them? I took the challenge and Mr. James gave me some time for me to figure out the terminal connections.

After a few tries, I managed to find the correct terminal connections. And I learn how a relay works too! Now the signal from the control box has to go through the relay before reaching the switch terminals on the inverter. If the switch is on, it will activate the relay and the relay contact will then pass the signal to the inverter thus activating it. This is how the terminal connection looks like:

The "rain" of work have finally ceased, for now. Not sure what's in store for me tomorrow but I better prepare myself and get sufficient rest while I can. The rain can re-start at any moment and the next one can be worst than the previous one

Today's experience is actually the combination of three previous daily titles, A Monumental Task, Unsolvable Problem and Entering the Next Level. Two major fieldwork today. In the morning we went to a factory in Sungai Buloh to install a 7.5kW inverter. We were called in because they need to replace the old inverter with a new one because the old inverter is no longer reliable. The motor is not running smoothly because of the old inverter. 

The inverter they purchased is the INVT inverter from China. The installation part is quite easy and less sweat than yesterday. The holes are already drilled so we just need to screw in the inverter and plug in the wires and start programming the inverter to match the settings of the old inverter. They only use the basic functions of the inverter so not much program codes are altered. After all of that is done, it is powered up just to make sure all the settings are correct. Thankfully, the motor is running accordingly and we are done for the first part of the fieldwork.

The journey towards the factory takes me very close to my home! Went through Subang Airport towards the last main junction to my house! So now Mr. James knows where I live. On the way back to the office Mr. James paid for my lunch in Mc Donalds!! Thanks Mr. James!!

The second fieldwork is actually about yesterday's glass factory problem but this time, I was asked to go there ALONE! I'm bad with directions and I only have a faint memory of the roads used to get there. Tried to recall all the landmarks and junctions and drove slowly with my eyes wildly looking for signboards with "Sungai Besi" written on it. Got confused at one point and took the WRONG junction. That happened TWICE! The first one I realized the landmarks are not familiar so I made a u-turn up ahead. Then the second one I mistakenly exited to KESAS Highway towards Puchong! Lucky I managed to find the nearest flyover to u-turn back on course. That cost me about 15 minutes of journey time and a toll fee! Finally managed to arrive at the factory! What a relief I felt at that point! I thought I would never get there!

Started to re-program the inverter according to the instructions given by Mr. James. Unfortunately, the problem is still there. I figured that the PLC is maybe faulty because it may not output a signal to deactivate the inverter. Mr. James called for reinforcement where he asked his collie who is an expert in PLC to come over. Few minutes later he arrived and connected the PLC on the control panel to his laptop. He managed to pinpoint the problem to the inverter itself! Apparently, the inverter did not shut down when the switch at the inverter is turned off. Supposedly, when all the switch at the inverter is turned off, it will deactivate inverter as well but in this case, it didn't.

Quite a stressful moment there. The PLC guy also seem to be stressed too because he himself is unable to solve the problem. Tried everything but nothing is able to solve the problem. Went back at 8.30pm today after failing to come up with any solution.

I managed to befriend with the factory supervisor, Mr. Jamal. He's a nice guy. He gave a lot of advice to me while I was doing my work. He told me that I need to improve on my wiring skills and he even helped me to install the inverter yesterday. He even gave me his business card and told me that I am free to call him anytime if I need advice regarding my internship or just about anything regarding life in general. He's also the one that asked about my age yesterday.

Things are getting harder now. I was expected to be more independent. I have a feeling that the days ahead is going to be a lot tougher than this. Still waiting for a new collie so that he can lighten my workload. Not that the work given to me is too much for me to handle, its just that I'm worried that I may not able to fully recover my energy and sober mind for the next day. But no turning back now, very close to the halfway mark.

It's Monday again! But this time its different. Today I went for two MAJOR fieldwork. One in Puchong and the other in Sungai Besi. Oh my God I'm incredibly tired right now! No pictures today so I'll try to keep it short.

Remember the pipe factory I visited last Friday? Me and my boss revisited that factory to resume our work on installing the new inverter. But the inverter that we are going to install is twice that of the old Telemechanique inverter due to motor rating. Lucky me, the factory owner agreed on the use of an eastern-made inverter. The inverter is INVT inverter from China. I'm used to this brand so the programming is like a walk-in-the-park. No, wait, that's too easy. Its like winning Call of Duty 5 on easy difficulty. Yeah, that's more like it. Ok back to the story.

So we arrived and unplugged the wires from the old inverter and connect it to the new inverter and modify the parameters in accordance with the needs of the person in charge of the machine. After he is satisfied, we proceed to the installation. A few holes are drilled, the inverter mounted into place, assembled the wires and the machine is powered up. After all the discrepancies solved and obtained the green light from the guy, its all DONE. Another satisfied customer. The whole process took about two hours. I did about 85% of the installation and programming so I was quite tired at the end of it.

Not done yet, we went straight to Sungai Besi..no, wait..After that we went for a detour to the office to pick up my car. Me and Mr. James went to Sungai Besi by convoy. We arrived at the glass manufacturing factory after about 30 minutes. We were called in because one of the inverter in the control panel has malfunctioned. The faulty inverter is from Delta Electronics, we replaced it with the INVT inverter that coincidentally has almost the same dimensions. This second fieldwork really gets the sweat out of me. Its just like last Thursday's fieldwork but twice the difficulty and duration because I need to re-wire the inverter due to the differences in wiring positions of both inverters.

After all that sweat drilling, wiring and installing the new inverter, Its ready to be powered up. Now a new problem arises. There are two switches connected to the inverter. The switch controls the motor that slides a 100kg glass plate to another conveyor. The problem is that we cannot configure the inverter so that the motor stops when either switch are off. Tried almost everything but failed to come up with a solution. So we plan to revisit the factory again tomorrow since its already 9.30pm. The installation part took about three hours. We kept pondering about the problem up until 9.30pm. I was at the brink of giving up at that point because I was too exhausted. But I push myself to persevere and try to stay sober. Thank God I managed to survive the day and managed to drive home safely.

I still get that "Wah you look so young!" impression from people I meet. This time its from the factory supervisor. He asked, "awak umur berapa tahun?" I answered, "Err..22 tahun.." and he replied, "Ooh..ingatkan 18 tahun tadi.." Do I really look THAT young? For your information, I never shaved my "misai" or moustache (is it correct?) yet..

Was speeding all the way back. Tailgated every single car on the right lane ALL THE WAY. Can't wait to get back! My mum made "Nasi Lemak" for me back home. Can't wait to get it in my stomach after savoring that unbeatable sambal taste on my tongue! My (used to be my mum's) seven year old (or is it eight?) car is still a great car to drive! Still feels like new. She handles well, the speed and acceleration is good. No breakdown in the last few years! Who says Proton makes such a bad car? That is so untrue! For me, at least. Sleep well, Waja Kesayangan Ku..

This post was supposed to be posted yesterday..but lets assume today is Friday.

In the morning we went for a supposedly "short" fieldwork in a small pipe factory in Puchong. The problem is that the motor is not producing enough torque to roll pipes with a big diameter. So we were called in to configure the inverter and modify the torque characteristics. The inverter is from Telemechanique, a company from Germany. 

I've never come across this brand before. The setup method is also very different from those inverters made in the east. I had a hard time familiarizing with it especially the program codes. To be honest, this is the WORST inverter I've come across so far. Alright, enough with the rants. So we arrived there and tried to figure out what to do. Modified the torque-speed pattern but to no avail. The guy in charge of the machine is not satisfied. Then I discovered a BIG problem. The "up" button of the inverter has malfunctioned! The inverter is not responding when I pressed it! Worst of all, the parameter value did not loop back after reaching minimum level. Meaning if the range is 0 to 15, it did not go to 15 after reaching 0! So there's NO WAY of increasing any parameter value!

The instruction manual is hopeless! The instructions are very confusing, I don't even know which part of the manual describes the steps to enable the external start/stop function! Such a basic function of an inverter but its not on the early pages of the manual like the eastern-made inverters! Postponed the work for lunch and Friday prayer but will continue to install a NEW inverter either on Saturday or next Monday.

I've made plenty of silly mistakes during the fieldwork and the activities after lunch such as misreading the values on the multimeter, mis-wiring the wire connections and wrongly answered some of Mr. James questions. Maybe because I was not fully recovered from yesterday's (Thursday) fieldwork fatigue. Maybe my mind is still exhausted and affected my level of focus throughout the day. (Sorry, Mr. James!). Mr. James went out shortly after lunch so I stayed in the office and "played" with another variant of the Telemec inverter. This model is quite small, meant for low-powered motor for basic applications.

Still, I can't configure it to control the speed using the external potentiometer! The manual is very short so not much explanation is fit in. My preference is still on the eastern-made (China, Taiwan and Japan) inverters. The explanation for each instruction is very detailed and very easy to understand even for a newbie like me. Maybe I'm complaining too much, or the manual is not designed with user-friendliness in mind. Either way, it's certain that I'm still too young in this industry and require an intensive training before I can be fully competent in this field of work. All in all, I learned that as an engineer, one must be able to adapt quickly with different model of devices and understand how it works or operates from the inside-out.

Oh my God, this is going to be long! Two big things to report today. I'll try to make it short. There's fieldwork today. Quite a big one I would say. The fieldwork takes me to a factory in Pulau Indah. My task is to install an inverter and configure it so that the speed of the motor is governed by an external potentiometer. The configuring part is easy. Just a few keystroke and it's done. Its the installation part that really brings out the sweat in you.

The inverter is from LS Electronics. I've never "played" with this brand before. Its about twice the size of yesterday's Mitsubishi inverter. First Mr. James maps out the wiring connections inside the control panel. The control panel is about two meters high and there's a lot of relays, circuit breakers, PLC's, voltage regulators and miles of wires. Surprisingly, not a single inverter is currently installed inside the control panel like what I used to see. This is going to be the first one so we need to find a space to attach it to the wall of the control panel. Lucky us the inverter is small enough to fit at the right side of the wall where most of the wire that we are going to modify is located.

The drilling and wiring part is the wettest part of the entire installation process. I was sweating like never before! Can see my sweat dripping on the floor! Maybe it was the warm atmosphere of the factory. But seriously, I've never been so wet like this before! That part took about two hours.

After everything including the programming part is done, the motor of interest is powered up. Thankfully, the motor is running at the correct direction and did not vibrate violently. The current is also acceptable. Another satisfied customer. At the end of the installation, my hands are very dirty with black dirt all over my palm and arms. I washed it three times with dish-washing soap but the stain is still there! But nevermind that because I have done a great job and obtained such a meaningful experience. And I did almost everything by myself!  

First part done, now the second one. The first part does not justify the title though. Here's what the title is all about.

There's an incident just two doors beside my office. In the morning I saw a few policemen standing in front of that office like they just found some illegal stuff. Soon after I saw a big police lorry reverse-parking at the front door of that shop lot. Then they start to load some untagged boxes into the lorry. The workers next door said that the police has just found a HUGE stash of illegal cigarettes! Apparently someone has been using that shop lot as a warehouse to store those illegal ciggies! Later on the reporters start coming in to take photos and interview the policemen.

It took them three lorries of the same size to load all of the ciggies from the "warehouse"! Such a huge stash of illegal ciggies perhaps enough to cater the need of the entire city of Kuala Lumpur for a day! Just now I saw the news saying that "Polis Selangor telah merampas rokok haram bernilai 500 ribu ringgit di Taman Bukit Puchong" (Selangor Police have confiscated illegal ciggies worth 500 thousand ringgit in Taman Bukit Puchong). Wow! Half a Million! That amount can easily afford the new 5-Series plus a nice single-digit plate number!! *drooling* And it all happened just two doors away from my office! I thought this neighbourhood is very peaceful and crime-free since the police station is very near! Got to be more careful now. 

Twenty-three days, minus the weekends..Wow! I can't believe I've made it this far! Still no broken equipments. Phew~ The inverters and equipments here in the office are worth hundreds of Ringgit if not thousands! Wouldn't want to fork out my hard-earned cash to pay for that!

No fieldwork today so this is going to be a short post. Resumed my endeavor on the Toshiba inverter and learned some of its advanced functions. I noticed that there are some flaws with the Toshiba inverter where some of the functions are not available when compared with other equivalent inverters from different brands. After lunch Mr. James asked me to learn another variant of the Mitsubishi Inverter. A small and very basic inverter the size of a mobile phone back in the 90's. This time the programming is A LOT simpler with only 90 parameters to control or modify. 

After lunch I went to the mosque for Zohor prayer as usual. As I was walking towards my car after the prayer, I saw a TNB van parked beside my car. Then I saw a guy about my age walking towards that van. Judging by the smart-casual-tucked-in wear he's definitely an intern just like me! Hey, we're on the same boat! well, not quite. His boat is bigger than mine since TNB is a much bigger company compared to mine. Oops, too much metaphor..lets get back to the topic.

He saw my UNITEN apartment sticker on my windscreen but he ignored it. As I get closer to my car, we made eye-contact. I was hoping that I or he would recognize each other but no, we didn't even exchanged a smile. I'm not exactly sure but I've never seen him before in UNITEN so he must've been from a different university. What a coincidence! I knew something like this will happen someday! 

I was informed that the visiting lecturer will meet my supervisor any day now but I do not know when she (yes, my visiting lecturer is a female lady) will visit me. Ma'am, if you're reading this, please email Mr. James (my supervisor) few days in advance before you visit him just in case we went out for a fieldwork. (macam biskut chipsmore, kejap-kejap ada kejap-kejap tinggal habuk je..)

Well this post turns out to be quite long..I get too carried away when I'm writing sometimes. No planning, no drafting, I just write as I think and it gets really long when I'm in "the zone". Ok enough. Resting now.

Second day without a collie. So far so good. Feels great to be in control of such a big workspace. I can divide it into quadrants to ease my work. The first quadrant is for the inverter, the second to put the instruction manual, the third to put another inverter and some empty space for the customer. The dispatch boy is absent so I get to use his desk too. 

Even with that kind of planning, the workstation was a mess! I often misplaced the screwdriver and took another one but it turns out that the screwdriver is just under the inverter cover beside me. That's how the mess escalates.

No fieldwork today. But Mr. James gave me a new brand of inverter to learn and test. This time its from Toshiba. Its a single phase, 200V, 2hp inverter. Much simpler than the Mitsubishi inverter. The Mitsubishi inverter has 800+ instructions or program codes while the Toshiba has less than 80 instructions so it's quite a straight-forward inverter. But there's a flaw. The control panel is in Japanese!!! (or is it Chinese?)

Fortunately the manual is in English. There's even a picture of the control panel that is in English. Phew~ At first it is very tedious to refer to that page each time I want to change the program codes. But once I get the hang of it, its very easy as if I was able to read Japanese! Spent the whole day working on this inverter to explore its functions.

After lunch Miss Goh asked me to tune a switching power supply unit (switching PSU) to output exactly 26.4V DC. The switching PSU normally outputs 24V DC but adjustable up to 27V. Took some patience to tune it with precision because there is a small delay before the value of the output stabilizes. After a few minutes I managed to tune it to exactly 26.4V as requested.

Around 10am a guy came in. He's an alumni from UPM. Now he's working in an electronics repairing company. We start to mingle and he told me that I should pursue my studies in PLC and automation engineering because the demand for such engineer is on the rise and selling these items can make a huge business. There are hundreds of factories in the vicinity of Shah Alam alone and they ALL need these automation machines to run. Now I'm seriously reconsidering what major I will take in my final year. Would it be Computer Engineering or Control and Automation Engineering?  

Monday blues..its here again! Traffic is extra crazy, I am incredibly lazy, waking up feeling dizzy..hey I can make a poem out of this! Ok straight to the point. Today (and the days to come) I will be alone in my workstation. Feeling quite sad..but look on the bright side, I get more space to work on the assignments, more freedom to move around, make any mess as I like..wait, there's no need to be sad. In fact, this is the time to rejoice! Mine!! That table is all MINE!!!! Muahahahahahahahahh *evil grin*. Such a huge workstation and its all MINE!!

Ehem, sorry, I overreacted. Ok here's my workstation. If you look closely on the top-left corner you can see a silhouette of a man that looks like my collie..creepy

Naaah..I was just kidding! My collie is alive and well in his college. Something to tease you people to get rid of the blues. No fieldwork today. I was just learning some advanced functions of the Mitsubishi inverter and test the function and verify my understanding.

Towards the evening I did some soldering work to brush up my soldering skills. Nothing much to do but I try to find something to do like tidy up the workstation, fix the toolbox, reading the manual on the laptop and things like that. The laptop is in front of me and the internet is readily available but I try to refrain myself from surfing Facebook, Lowyat.net and even my email. That would impart a negative impression towards me. And I try not to sleep or do nothing. Like the internship supervisor once said, "If you have nothing to do don't just sit there and sleep". He's Indian so he has a slang of saying that and it sticks in my head really good!

In the last 30 minute of my working hour, I saw a wire extension residing on the dark corners of my workstation. It was broken last week after a power surge. It did not output any voltage when it is turned on. The fuse is still intact though. Out of curiosity I tried to find out what is wrong with it so I unscrewed the plug. Changed the fuse just to see if it will "magically" works again. Checked the continuity but it failed. Then I checked the live wire screwed between the fuse and the plug. Hey, I think I MAY have found the problem here.

The wire has got no metal wire sticking out of it anymore! I stripped the wire, screwed the whole thing back into place and checked its continuity. "Teeeeeeeeeet!" The multimeter beeps! It worked! I fixed it! Not a big deal but to me its a milestone! That's the purpose of engineers. To fix things! First you start by analyzing the problem. Then you try to figure out where the problem originates. Next you try to find a solution or alternatives to that problem and lastly test the solution to see whether that problem is completely solved. Great lesson I learn today despite having very little work. 

Shoot! I'm two days late! This post was supposed to be published two days ago! The reason is that I was involved with an activity in UNITEN yesterday. My beloved club, Persatuan Pembimbing Rakan Sebaya (PRSUNITEN) organized the Training of Trainers to prepare the committees for "Program Pintar". I was handling an activity similar to "explorace" together with the President and a few other committees. It was a great day!

I have successfully completed one-third of my internship! Status report: no broken equipment, full attendance, no "I can't take this anymore!!" attitude..yup, I'm still in good shape. Last Friday also happens to be my collie's last day in the office! I'll be all alone next week!

Summary of Friday's activity, I learned how to connect two power supplies in series to amplify its voltage and I learned about the Panasonic PLC and its programmer.

The power supply is actually an inverter. In converts a 240V AC to 48V DC but the output voltage can be adjusted up to 56V. The customer wants a 110V DC output so we connected two of them in series and adjusted the voltage. The setup is shown below:

Then I learned about the Panasonic PLC. The technique is pretty similar to a microcontroller. The PLC is connected to the PC with a serial cable, the program can then be uploaded and modified and downloaded back to the PLC. The only major difference is the programming language. The ladder diagram can be very difficult for beginners like me. 

Now that my collie has left the company, I'll be all alone for a while. Mr. James is still looking for interns to replace him. I am not very confident but hopefully everything that I learned from my collie is enough for the days ahead. Whatever that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.

Remember the Mitsubishi inverter I posted yesterday? Actually the problem is not solved yet. I just found out this morning that the range of frequency that the potentiometer controls is incorrect. Supposedly, when the potentiometer is at maximum, the frequency at the inverter display is 120Hz and 0Hz when the potentiometer is at minimum. But I found out that the potentiometer is only controlling up to 60Hz. I hope you get what I mean.

As soon as the office opens, I tried to solve the problem by changing the program of the inverter but to no avail. Asked Mr. James on what to do but before long, a customer walked in to purchase a power supply so the problem is halted for a while.

After the customer had left, Mr. James asked us to pack the equipment because we are going for a fieldwork in Shah Alam. The fieldwork takes us to a very famous electrical appliance manufacturer (sorry can't disclose the name of the company). The factory is very big. The biggest I've been into so far.

We were called in because the motors that runs a conveyor belt is unable to power up. The problem lies within the control panel. After Mr. James inspected the wiring, he found the problem and fixed the wiring. Surprisingly, the motors are able to power up after a simple modification on the wiring! But by the time it is done its already lunch hour so we went to the factory's cafeteria for lunch.

We ordered nasi goreng and as usual Mr. James paid for it! Thanks Mr. James! The nasi goreng is fantastic! Almost as good as my mum's nasi goreng! And the portion is big too. I was unable to finish my meal eventhough I was quite hungry!

After lunch we went straight to the control panel and finish off the work. Tested the motor and everything is running accordingly and the factory supervisor is satisfied. Another job well done.

Mr. James dropped me and my collie at the office and left. He asked me to continue working on the Mitsubishi inverter. That's what today is all about. Without haste, the inverter is powered up and I start to modify the program in the inverter. Tried modifying the program codes many times but failed to solve the problem. The manual says that if I modify this program code, that should solve the potentiometer problem. But it did not. In fact, I cannot see any difference before and after that procedure. Tried to modify other parameters (inverter program code) but still no solution. After about half an hour trying to figure out the problem, I gave up and took short break by reading a magazine. Too stressed up to continue and my head feels like a tornado!

I purposely did not try to seek help from my collie because I want to train myself to be more independent to solve a problem. I did everything on my own, painstakingly trying to understand the instruction manual and programming the inverter. After a 15 minute break, I resumed my endeavor. It took me an hour before I FINALLY managed to solve the problem! The potentiometer is now governing frequencies from 0Hz to 120Hz like it is supposed to do! The solution is to change the potentiometer circuit terminal and modify some parameters! Took me an hour to figure that out! But hey, the most important thing is that I persevered and never give up and that lead to the solution of the problem!

Perseverance, an important attribute an engineer MUST have. A great lesson I learned today. To be honest, I am quite an impatient person especially on the roads but today I proved to myself that the "slow and steady" approach to a problem is indeed the best approach.

Finally recovered my energy and able to do two posts today. Had breakfast on the way to the office at KFC Petronas USJ 20 today. Quite a peaceful place to have breakfast and there was less than five customers dining in. I even updated my logbook there.

At 9:15am, some unknown number called my phone. I was quite reluctant to answer it because Mr. James was in front of me but I eventually answer the call. Turns out it was that guy with the 24krpm motor that came into the office yesterday! He called to ask about the inverter terminal connections. The conversation is entirely in English. I tried to maintain my composure and speak as politely and as clearly as I can. With the help of Mr. James I was able to answer all of his queries. Customer management skills I acquired during my previous job in COE Kiosk, UNITEN also proved to be handy in this situation.

A good engineer must not be good in technical work alone but in customer management as well. That call is one way to train me to be an all-rounded engineer.

Around 3.30pm, Mr. James gave me an inverter to learn. The Mitsubishi inverter. As usual the setup is shown below:

The user manual is very user-friendly. All the details are grouped together nicely with reference pages included. Ironically, I was not able to setup the inverter to use the external potentiometer to control the speed of the motor. The reason is that the Mitsubishi inverter is used for highly advanced and accurate applications so the descriptions are "not in English", metaphorically speaking, or incomprehensible at some parts. But eventually with the help of my collie we were able to solve the problem.

In the process of learning that inverter, a customer came in to purchase a proximity sensor. He looked at me and asked, "Trainee aa? You Form 5 is it?" Immediately I answered, "No no, I'm 22 years old" And he replied, "Wah you look so young!" still with the face of disbelief. Its good to have that kind of impression from people. So "young" but can service a very complicated machine. But that impression has it own pros and cons. The downside of it especially when I'm going to look for long-term jobs later is that employer will under-estimate my capabilities because I look so young and naive. They will go "This guy look so young, I don't think he can take the job". Then I will have a hard time convincing the interviewer later.

Whatever that is, I still have more than a year before I have to worry about that. Let's just put aside that issue and enjoy university life while it lasts.

This post was supposed to be published yesterday. I was unable to get it done because I was too tired to articulate any words. No fieldwork yesterday. Mr. James asked us to explore the use of some special function terminals of the INVT inverter and connect them in parallel with a pilot lamp and a relay. The setup is shown below:

The output of the special function output terminal (HDO Terminal) is supposed to output a 24V DC when it is activated. However, when we measure it, the voltage is less then 20V and it is unable to activate the relay. By the way, that relay is activated or energized when it receives a 24V DC voltage. Can hear a "clip" sound when it's on. After a while troubleshooting the problem, we abandoned the problem and went for lunch.

Around 3.30pm, a customer walked in. He brought with him an inverter and a very speedy motor. The rated speed of the motor is 24000rpm! That's more than twice faster than the fastest hard drive available on the market! Very speedy indeed. And very scary to work on too. Even at half the speed the sound is like the motor is going to explode any minute! 

The motor is cylindrical. Its about the length of an A4 paper and its very heavy. I can barely carry it with my arms! And another interesting feature of the motor is that it has an internal watercooling system! Unfortunately we were unable to simulate the watercooling feature. Sorry I couldn't snap any picture of the motor because the customer was there. I hope I have described enough.

Obviously the customer did not simply walk into the office to show-off his powerful motor. He came with a problem in mind and we, have the solution (Yeah, right!). He wants us to setup the inverter to control the motor and teach him how to setup and program the inverter. Piece of cake! Not until we stumbled on a big problem. During acceleration, the current shoots up too high and the inverter trips when we set the acceleration time to be less than 1.5 minute! But the customer wants it running at full speed in 20 seconds!  That's impossible! After explaining to the customer the situation he finally agreed on the issue.

Unsolvable problem that was. Can't blame the inverter because its one of the high-end inverter and it is Made in Japan. 

I don't know why I was so tired yesterday eventhough there was no fieldwork. Slept early at 10.30pm yesterday.

   

Its the day everyone hates. Mondays. The weekend is never enough to rest the body and soul. Was worried that I may not wake up in time for work so I set two alarm clocks to prevent that but ended up waking up on time. Then the same ol' routine is repeated. Sometimes I feel that life's like a big computer program just that you don't know when it will end.

After lunch Mr. James brought us to a color *something* factory in the outskirts of Shah Alam to install an inverter. One of the inverter that controls a machine in the factory is faulty so they purchased a new one from us. Did some wiring stuff and in less than 15 minutes it is done and the machine is powered up and ready to be programmed. Not much programming is needed since the customer only uses the most basic function of the inverter. No external switch, relay or external speed control whatsoever. I can say that this is the shortest and simplest fieldwork I've done so far. 

Once done Mr. James took us to Old Town Kopitiam in Puchong! I was really awkward to order anything because I was afraid that my meal is more expensive than my boss' meal because to me that might me rude or ill-mannered. To avoid that guilt, I just ordered a drink. It took me a while to analyze the menu though. In the end this is what I ordered:

It looks like Iced Lemon Tea, it even taste like one but its not. I can't recall the exact name for this beverage but its not Iced Lemon Tea. Turns out Mr. James did not mind me to order anything on the menu when he said "You sure you don't want to try anything?". Aaarrrggghhhh!! I should have ordered something just now! But it's OK, I was not hungry anyway. Thanks Mr. James!

That is it for today. Nothing much to report. Went back at 5.30pm and arrived home an hour later. I wish that I have a magic carpet that can fly over that horrendous traffic everyday...Hah! Dream on!