This week and the next is special. Want to know why?? Its the school holidays! No I'm not saying that I'll be joining the school-goers, school holiday means LESS TRAFFIC!!! Even the DJ on the radio agrees with this! From my observation, morning traffic has reduced by more than 60 percent! Normally I arrive at Puchong around 8-8.15am but today I arrived at 7.45am! Took the left and middle lane all the way and did not tailgated any cars. Total contrary on what I used to do on normal working days! 

Went to two factories today. The title today is related to the second factory visit. Around 10.30am me and Mr. James went deep into the outskirts of Meru, Klang. There's this very long stretch of road where both sides of it is still thick jungle! But occasionally I saw newly developed housing areas but who wants to buy a house in the middle of nowhere! Quite a scary road to travel through during the night. I don't think I saw any light poles there..look for Jalan Batu Arang on Google Maps.

At the end of that stretch of road we arrive at an industrial area and eventually arrived at the factory. Its a polyglass manufacturing plant. I don't know what polyglass is but I saw many glass pellets near one of the machines. So the problem is one of the servo drive is faulty. They want us to inspect the faulty drive and look for alternatives. Servo drive is almost similar to an inverter but I'm not sure what's the main difference between the two of them.

I did nothing much except writing down the drive and PLC models. Mr. James was doing all the talking and negotiating. We were there for about one hour. Next we went for lunch at McDonalds!! Its beside Mint Hotel along the road I used to travel from home to UNITEN. Thanks Mr. James!!

The second fieldwork is regarding the Hitachi inverter I discussed yesterday. We went to the automotive parts manufacturing factory in Serdang to install that cute light-blue baby inverter. Quite a famous manufacturer but too bad I am not allowed to disclose the name here. Walked straight to the machine of interest and met with the officer-in-charge of that machine to see how the inverter is used before replacing it. I'm not sure what is the problem with the old inverter but only the basic functions is used. The inverter and some other things is mounted inside a steel control box. I wrote down all the inverter parameter settings and terminal connections and unscrewed the inverter.

The new inverter is of the same brand but different model! The dimensions are different. The new inverter is slightly longer and to my dismay, NONE of the screw holes (used to mount the inverter) matches with the new unit so I have to drill four new holes! Recall that the surface that I have to drill through is pure steel! This is where my arm strength is put to the test. Took me a few minutes to drill one hole and it felt like I just did 50 push-ups! But I still have three more holes to go! Oh my, I have got to exercise my arms after this!

Did a mistake after drilling the four holes so I have to drill another four holes! Occasionally Mr. James came to my aid by pushing the drill to increase the penetration rate. Finally the drilling is DONE! I can barely lift my arms but I tried to ignore the feeling and proceeded to mount the inverter into place. That's a wake up call for me. I MUST exercise my arms and upgrade my stamina after this! Took me 42 days of internship to realize that!!

The drilling part took most of our time there. The programming was a breeze. Managed to get the correct setting on the first try. The officer-in-charge and the factory supervisor is satisfied with my work so we went back to the office. Was about 5pm when it was done. Another job well done. The feeling of contentment is indescribable!