Tracking Down Those Intermittent Faults

Customer Requirement

To monitor ground movement or subsidence around a copper mine which is generally unstable, for the safety of miners and machinery. Early warning of danger situations is essential.

Equipment

• DT500 data logger
• Power Transducers

dataTaker Solution

To identify the cause of a long term intermittent fault at a large pumping station, which is unattended for most of the year. Once a year the starting circuit would fail causing downtime, damage and costly repair.

The starting circuits for properly sequencing the startup of six large water authority pumps, and for distributing load between the pumps, is complex. Periodically the starting circuits would fail, causing damage, downtime, and frustrated irrigators and consumers.

A dataTaker DT500 was used to monitor current transducers connected to various points through the startup circuitry. Data was stored into a circular buffer, such that at any time the most recent 7 days of data was available. The dataTaker had effectively become a "flight recorder".

When the fault next occurred, data for the recent period revealed that the starting circuit had attempted to start two pumps almost simultaneously.

Costly plans to redesign the whole pumping system were shelved.