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.