Construction or maintenance???

Construction or maintenance???

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wptski said:
Is a eletrician apprentice trained to do construction and maintainence work? Is trouble shooting a trained or learned skill? Trouble shooting is a nak that some never get good at. I think that maintainence is harder on the brain than it is on the body. You don't worry about NEC at all while doing maintainence work.
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Bill, you might get eaten by that last sentence:D, but he's talking about just troubleshooting systems, not doing installs in the plant:wink:
 
To be more specific, I mean would you like to take care of problem calls all day long for a company, or would you rather do new installs week in and week out?

When Bob worked at the amusement park, he took care of anything electrical, and I doubt that ever got really boring or repetitious. That's what I meant by maintenance, working on equipment.

Construction- Commercial, industrial, inside wireman
 
nunu161 said:
it was a Big Ass Fan Co. they're pretty cool they go a lot faster then i thought they would. it was funny when i first looked at the arcitechtuals it read big ass fan right on it in the middle of the print i thought it was a joke at first
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We have one in our shop, cant turn it past 7 or everything goes flying all around, it is a beast!
 
76nemo said:
To be more specific, I mean would you like to take care of problem calls all day long for a company, or would you rather do new installs week in and week out?

When Bob worked at the amusement park, he took care of anything electrical, and I doubt that ever got really boring or repetitious. That's what I meant by maintenance, working on equipment.

Construction- Commercial, industrial, inside wireman
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Brad:

A factory is a lot different than a amusement park.
 
brian john said:
Some of the best work I have ever seen is on a construction job and by far the hackiest I have ever seen was completed by maintenance electricians time after time after time. And in almost all cases the maintenance guys had plenty of free time to do the job properly, maybe too much time.

Guy in my office installed two of those Big Ass Fans in his horse barn, not sure who wired them, I sure hope he hired someone.
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Hi Brian, can't really argue with you, there are a number of variables at play here though. Perhaps, as a whole, a maintenance crew may have less overall experience than a construction crew although that is purely speculation. A more pertinent variable, as you have hinted at, is the amount of "Free" time a maintenance worker may have. If a guy is use to reading the paper for an hour, he may just slap whatever he's working on together just to get back to his lounge. Not I though, I loved the "Freedoms" I was given during my maintenance job, which only lasted a year. By freedoms I mean the time given me and the go ahead to come up with a solution for the task at hand. I was always ready to jump on a job when a work order came in but some of my co-workers weren't as enthusiastic as myself.
 
As machine tools get more complex(electronics) it's harder even for the well seasoned electrician to find problems. Many times a outside vendor is called in to assist, people like the user here "gar" for one.
 
iwire said:
I am with you, I take a lot of pride in that as well, I also find it fun. Real fun is when others have been beating their head against a wall for hours with no luck and you come in and find the problem in short order.:D
:D
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Ditto, I'm the "go to guy" when it comes to troubleshooting machine problems at our shop. I also have a lot of respect, almost jealousy, for one of our guys when we need to run conduit. He never messes up! I'm his "apprentice" when we run conduit.
 
wptski said:
As machine tools get more complex(electronics) it's harder even for the well seasoned electrician to find problems. Many times a outside vendor is called in to assist, people like the user here "gar" for one.
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It's often the simple stuff too.

Countless times coming in on a factory paid "warranty" call cause the new $10k whatsit isn't doing it's thing... wrong voltage, no neutral, dead short in the jbox, tripped breaker, H&C water lines crossed, not level, etc etc.

Shortly after I took over the dispatching I adjusted the service request spiel... "in the event that the work necessary to resolve the problem is not covered by the (MFR) warranty (pause), will YOU be responsible for our charges?"

Fun times. ;)
 
BryanMD said:
It's often the simple stuff too.

Countless times coming in on a factory paid "warranty" call cause the new $10k whatsit isn't doing it's thing... wrong voltage, no neutral, dead short in the jbox, tripped breaker, H&C water lines crossed, not level, etc etc.

Shortly after I took over the dispatching I adjusted the service request spiel... "in the event that the work necessary to resolve the problem is not covered by the (MFR) warranty (pause), will YOU be responsible for our charges?"

Fun times. ;)
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$10K? I'm refering to something in the $200K-$800K range, multi-axis machine tools like gear hobbers or gear lapping machines. Ever hear of Gleason Works?

Something like these which I've worked on.
 
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