noisy starter

[ptonsparky]

I'm retired, I thought.

Long story I ended up on a project to get a VFD running. Then the customer adds some while your heres. Mostly farmer done project, but believe me, way better than I expected. Rigid & IMC was almost picture worthy. New stater installed by them needed control connected. Noisy as all hell. checked connections, checked voltage, you name it. I thought it was me, after all I am retired. Well let's pull off the brand new starter. Chit. metal filings. They had installed the breaker last & above the starter. Just enough filings to keep it from sealing in.

He tells me a short little drag cost $30,000 to install.
I told him we could touch screen the control for way less than that drag.
We will see.

 

[hillbilly1]

I had a journeyman mount a bunch of electrically held lighting contactors in a big distribution center. The walls were concrete, and he drilled for the anchors through the enclosure complete with contactor! I spent a week going around blowing the dust out of the magnets!

 

[Jraef]

I may have told this story already...

Built some 300HP Soft Starter panels for rock crushers on a big dam project in SoCal. Customer installed them with their own people. 3 months later I get a call that all of the bypass contactors are chattering loudly. Their electrician pulls the coils out and the armatures are terribly rusted! This of course must be MY fault, because I used rusty contactors, right? Of course from my standpoint they were brand new out of the box, so I am blaming ABB for shipping rusted contactors to me... But I DID test them and they were fine in my shop. So what gives?

I fly down there (I was in Seattle at the time), rent a car and drive 3 hours to get to the jobsite. Sure enough, every single contactor is rusty, and this is in the middle of the desert! As I am scratching my head and replacing the contactors, a guy drives by and stops to look at what I'm doing. He says "Its about time someone came out to replace those things. When the water truck sprayed them, I knew it was going to ruin something!" Turned out the electrician had just finished wiring them up and left the doors wide open while he went to get his boos to inspect them. The water truck went by to keep the dust down, spraying the panels on the inside! They dried them as best they could and saved all the electronics, but nobody thought to check inside of the contactors. Bingo! I got to bill them for my T&M... The job super was pissed that someone told me about the water truck. He demanded to know who it was, I didn't rat the guy out because he had done me a solid.

 

[augie47]

Hopefully you were able to bill them at a ridiculous rate for deceit

 

[Jraef]

Hopefully you were able to bill them at a ridiculous rate for deceit

Well, it was just my normal field rate, but they certainly thought it was ridiculous compared to their own on-site electrician. Had they just owned up to it and had their guy replace them it certainly would have cost them less. The other potential side cost to them was that I voided their warranty. As it turned out though everything lasted for the duration of the project. The soft starts were probably sold off with the crushers as surplus once the dam was completed.