Yes, thank you Captain Obvious! Of course two brains are better than one lonely brain! Today my collie didn't show up for work! I was quite lonely today..huhu..well not for long. Today is full of meaningful activities. Started off the day by learning a new component. The "Pilot Lamp". The pilot lamp is normally used to indicate if there's any fault in the machine. Its like an LED on steroids because it uses either 24VDC or 240VAC to power it. In my case it is used to see the state of the output of the SSR. I connected them to the output of the solid-state relay (SSR). Remember I mentioned about SSR last week? Below is how the SSR looks like. At the end of this assignment I learnt how to connect the pilot lamp. The connection is shown below. Its not clearly visible though.

Today Mr. James brought me around Shah Alam and Petaling Jaya to deliver some stuffs to the customer. Then we went to Giant Hypermarket near UNITAR. Guess what? Mr. James "belanja" me KFC at the hypermarket! Wow what a great employer! Thanks a lot Mr. James!!

Then we revisited the food factory in Shah Alam again to look at the counter. Its the same machine that I described on Day 8. Apparently the relay mechanism under the table that controls the motor and the relays are not synchronized with the other two relay mechanism. I managed to set the counter such that the open-close-open-close rate of the clamper is synchronized with the other two clampers but somehow the relays that controls the motor and something else under the table had a different on-off pattern than the rest. Quite a stressful moment I would say because I was given a time limit by Mr. James and I fail to solve the problem. But its all part of the challenge of being an engineer. Feels great to have experienced such a situation.

Then we went to an LED and semiconductor manufacturing factory to inspect their UPS system. Too bad the UPS system is outside of the factory, away from the manufacturing plant. I wish to see the doping process of a semiconductor and how to fabricate the LED. Ok back to the story. The UPS is used to control the factory's compressors. There are so many compressors around all the size of a car! I wonder why they need such a big compressor. At the control panel I saw BIG and THICK wires! Its the thickness of the rope used in "tarik tali" competitions. It is used to carry a whopping 1200 Amps of current! Those amps not only kill, it will fry the unlucky fellow in moments!

The compressors are located in an isolated room outside of the manufacturing plant. Its very noisy and hot inside the room with all that compressors heating up and the high level of noise they generate. Truly an uncomfortable place to work at. Lucky I was in the room for a short period of time. Once the UPS is wired, the compressor (the one controlled by the UPS) is powered up. The sound of the compressor powering up is melodious. Its like a Lamborghini engine being powered up but the noise is a lot louder and lasts longer. Very nice melody.

Today I saw two UNITEN students on the road! One in LDP near the big Western Digital Factory. I can't recall the guy's name but he's driving a black saga aeroback plate number WHP3090. He looks quite stressed maybe because the highway was jam-packed at that time. The other one on my way back home at Kewajipan intersection. I don't know this guy but I always see his car in UNITEN. He's driving a green satria plate number MAM 11. I know this car because of the plate number. Very unique.

The week's over! Time to rest. But I feel like going out tomorrow. Maybe to OneUtama or The Curve just to look around and buy some stuffs. Its been a while since the last time I went shopping.. Yes you read correctly. Shopping. Women are not the only ones holding many shopping bags in the Megamall you know!

The hardest part in every endeavor is to start. Like composing this essay, the hardest part is the introduction. But once done, everything felt like a breeze. Did not slept well last night, kept thinking what is going to happen today. Pondering with questions like "What if I got lost in the highway and can't reach the office on time?", "What if I wrongly connect a wire and damage the machine due to lack of knowledge?", "Do I have sufficient knowledge to survive tomorrow's assignments?", "What type of assignments will Mr. James give me?" and many more. In order to prevent that, I was heavily "armed" with all the books I have, hand drawn maps complete with landmarks (Petronas, 7-11, mosque, restaurants, etc) and two separate alarm clocks to make sure I wake up at  6am and depart before 7am to avoid heavy traffic.

Departed at 6.50am. Missed an intersection in Puchong but due to the "high level of detail" of my hand drawn map, I was able to find my way around and arrived at 7.30am and had breakfast nearby. Promised Mr. James that I will arrive before 9am. Wow! I was 90 minutes early!

My first assignment, I was given an instruction manual about an inverter. This inverter is used to control the speed of an induction motor by varying the voltage and/or frequency of the supply voltage. It falls under Variable Frequency Drive or specifically the VVVF (Variable Voltage Variable Frequency Drive). Basically this is what the inverter looks like, in 2D: (used Power Point to make this picture)

I learn about how to assemble and dissemble it, wire connections, the proper way to ground several similar inverters, circuit terminals and how to troubleshoot the machine. There are several programming codes each with a specific function. The programming functions are accessible by pressing a few buttons. The explanation is too long. More about this later. Oh, I forgot to mention, there's another intern in the office. He's in for one month already.

Then me and my collie were given another task, to troubleshoot a customer's UPS Device. No its not the courier service, its the abbreviation of Uninterruptible Power Supply. Its basically a backup battery for utility machines in the event of power failure or blackout. These are the instruments used: 

First we have to find out what is the maximum resistance for this VR using Fluke 112 Series Multimeter. It turns out to be 89.0ohms. Then we have to construct the simple power supply - load circuit to test the UPS. Using the Fluke Clamp Meter, (looks pretty weird, no?) the current is measured to see if the UPS is stable or not under any load conditions.

All this was before lunch hour. We went for a fieldwork in the afternoon. I will describe my experience in Part 2 of this day. 

Sifu I learnt a lot!