Knowledgebase Article Number

4412766192151

Description

Published November 10th, 2021, at approximately 12:30 p.m. EST. 

Resolution 

At Bastian Solutions, we continually strive to provide superb customer service at the highest standard, and not only reactive but proactive support. Transparency is a key component in helping achieve this objective and with that in mind, we are providing a full root cause analysis for the disruptions in service on November 3rd and 4th, 2021 described below.

Summary:

Tuesday, November 3rd

12:20 AM EST
Jim called in and talked with me (Ryan Smith) after midnight. He said he was experiencing an issue with C124. a belt after the scale, before the sorter that was not inducting onto the sorter. My first thought was the fault showing for the sorter belt C126, not C124. Jim said that fault showed all the time when stopped, and reset and started the system. The fault did clear, and I observed that C124 took longer than expected to start running. By the time I got to that belt in the PLC, everything was running well again. The only thing I saw that was possibly stopping C124 in the PLC was a C126 not at full speed condition. But could not verify since stopping and starting at that point, the sorter ran correctly, and so did C124. Jim said he would call the next night, because this seems to happen after midnight. I asked if they had a replacement drive or motor, if that what it turned out to be. He said he would check with maintenance.

November 4th

12:25 AM EST

Jim called back with the same circumstances. I saw that C126 the sorter was not running past 12Hz in speed, and that was why C124 was not inducting any packages. After checking the VFD, I could not find anything wrong. I called Rockwell Support and had them on the phone with me for about an hour and a half. They walked me through several parameters in the drive to check, but all seemed good. Rockwell suggested some parameter changes that might help, or at least give us some more information, but we did not find anything wrong. At a little past 2AM, Jim said they were done for the night and that it always worked again in the morning.

7:30 AM EST
Shawn Harris called in and the sorter would not run over 12Hz still. Scott Turner got on a video call with Shawn and had him look at several things on the sorter mechanically because nothing seemed amiss with the drive or the PLC, it just wasn't coming up to speed. Scott thought it may be something binding in the idler pulley or somewhere else. Shawn said he needed to get someone else in to check the sorter over mechanically. Drive was showing overload and motor stalled faults.

9:00 AM EST
Savannah on our team talked with someone, and the thought was to verify if it was a Drive/Motor issue or Sorter issue by decoupling the motor from the sorter and try and run it. Radial was supposed to call back once that was completed.

6:30 PM EST

Andres Garza talking to Bill. The drive had been replaced, but needed programmed. Andres walked them through addressing the new drive, and loaded the parameters. The new drive gave a fault code of F064 Overload/Acceleration Fault and F004 Undervoltage. Andres got Rockwell on the phone in order to troubleshoot this issue. Rockwell wanted to run an Autotune on the drive, but this required decoupling the motor in order for the autotune to work properly.

9:00 PM EST

Mo Alwishah worked with your onsite people and Rockwell to check wiring, check parameters and run an autotune on a new motor. Mo found that some of the parameters that were saved in the PLC were probably not final parameters and needed changed. With Rockwell support, after autotuning the new motor on the new drive, it looked to run correctly. Radial was to reconnected the old motor, and the sorter see if the old motor runs the sorter correctly now.

11:17 PM EST

Radial reconnected the old motor, and the sorter began to run correctly.

Root Cause:

So, it seems that the root cause was a bad drive that was not functioning correctly. Some incorrect parameters saved in the PLC, also, hindered restarting after a new drive was installed. Another part that may have played a factor, but we were not given any information was the mechanical check of the sorter. Did Radial maintenance find anything that was corrected but not communicated to Bastian Support?

Resolution:

Replaced the drive with a new unit and saving the new corrected parameters with an accurate Autotune.

Next Steps and Preventive Actions:

We have corrected the saved parameters for this drive for easier replacement next time.  As always, spare part availability always plays a big part in timely correction of issues.

Our commitment to you:

Bastian Solutions understands the impact of the disruption that occurred and affected operations for your organization. It is our primary objective in providing our clients with superb customer service, and we assure you we're taking the required preventative measures to prevent reoccurrence.