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!

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.