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)

Feels great to have survived the first day! Starting to get used to everything. No more "What if I'm lost in the highway" dilemma. Now I know where are the places to eat, pray, convenience stores and petrol stations. Best of all, everything is nearby! Its very convenient to work in this part of Puchong. Slowly I'm starting to develop a map of Puchong in my mind. 

As soon as I entered the office, me and my collie were given an assignment that is to troubleshoot a faulty customer's motor driver. Remember the servo motor I mentioned on my first interview? We are revisiting that problem. Forget the motor, our task is to troubleshoot the faulty motor driver. Firstly disconnect the CW (clockwise) ports of the faulty driver, connect to a working driver (the small silver box), connect that to a power supply and a brand new stepper motor (the smaller motor). Then both drivers are turned on but the rate of speed change of the motor is not uniform. My collie suggested that the root of the problem is in the faulty driver's internal circuitry.

Not long after that, we are asked to troubleshoot a newly arrived factory counter device ordered by a customer. First and foremost, we read the instruction manual and figure out the circuit connection and the required power supply. Then we started to connect the main power supply, proximity sensor and the solid-state module. Allow me to explain each device one by one. First up, the counter. The counter is the normal counter that some of you have come across in Digital Logic Design Lab. It has two outputs that will turn on or off depending on the preset counter value (at what counter value you want it to turn on). We connected the proximity sensor to provide an input signal to the counter so that the counter will start counting when the sensor is triggered and when the preset limit is met, the appropriate output will be triggered. The sensor has 3 wires, black, brown and blue. Black is connected to the signal port, Brown for input voltage and blue for grounding. Thirdly, the solid state module. It is actually a relay that provides the needed 12V for the output of the counter. I can't recall the exact function. Will explain later.

After lunch Mr. James invited me and my collie to go for another fieldwork (Yay~). This time its in an air conditioned factory in Shah Alam to troubleshoot a touch-screen PLC machine (sorry no pictures, no camera is allowed!). I learnt that the programming method is almost similar to programming a PIC18, you must have the interface software, serial cable and/or USB cable and the PLC machine. Users are able to download and upload a program to and from the PLC. But the programming is different than what I learn in MicroP Lab. Instead of using assembly programming or C++, the ladder diagram is used. Quite complicated I would say. But I was there just to observe the maintenance process. Still far from competence!

Then Mr. James brought us towards the west side of Selangor as far as Pulau Indah to deliver some stuffs to the customer. Mr. James was driving, at the rear seat it feels like "balik kampung" seeing the rural landscapes of Klang and Pulau Indah. Its good to have such view as it relaxes your mind after all that hard work. At the end of the trip, Mr. James "belanja us makan at mamak restaurant". (pardon the english!) Thanks Mr. James!

Time to prepare for tomorrow. Still have not finished writing yesterday's part of the logbook..need to stop procrastinating! But what the heck, its been a great day! There's still tomorrow and the day after..