Percussive Maintenance

Some day, I will manage to figure this one out.

At my day job, (not the range), I run a monster NC plasma cutter.

For those not involved in the steel industry, a plasma cutter, in essence, starts an electric arc and sends a stream of high pressure gas, (oxygen in this case), along the arc, which cuts through metal at reasonably high speed. It's spectacular to watch, since the oxygen stream is about 10,000 degrees fahrenheit. Lots of smoke and burning metal, and that nice blue arc on top. The one I run is computer controlled, and can move along pretty fast.

Part of the equipment for this cutter are the power packs. These take 460V and turn it into the 130-150Volt 200Ampere current required for the actual cutting of the metal.

For the last two years, whenever starting power pack number 1, it has been necessary to hold down the start button with one hand, and whack the control panel with the other. Sometimes you had to whack the thing a LOT to get it going. And it had a nasty habit of shutting off while the torch was running, which is highly annoying, to say the least. Particularly if you don't catch it right away.

Needless to say, there has been a bit of complaint about this.

Finally, two weeks ago, our production mangler deigned to have someone come out and look at it.

$135.00 in parts and a $140.00 service call later, it's running pretty much the way it should. (Still likes to shut off every once in a while, though.)

The irritating part about it? The production mangler knew what the problem was, because we had to do the same thing to number 2 about six years ago. And knew what it was gonna cost. In fact, we had had the parts on the shelf for the last six years.

You figure it out, I sure can't.