kristof65 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 (this rant will probably only make sense to you if you have a basic understanding of electrical/electronic circuits) So a few weeks back, I got handed a site because they have an ongoing problem with one self service bay that supposedly keeps blowing up boards - they've going through something like 5 boards in as many months. What I discovered was that the bay keeps blowing the output fuse on our circuit board. But somehow in their troubleshooting, they keep managing to blow up/break the board in other ways - I'm not exactly sure how for the ones before me, but todays board they broke the fuse holder off. In a nutshell, the circuitry of our board boils down to this: All of the circuitry on the board is literally there to turn on a relay coil, which closes a normally open contact that is wired to the self serve pump stand. This output is fused with a 3 amp fuse, so that if the pump stand draws too much current, it pops the easily replaceable fuse instead of damaging the contacts on the not as easily replaceable relay. The self serve pump stands are from a different manufacturer. I cannot seem to get them to comprehend that the real problem is NOT our circuit board, but whatever keeps drawing more than 3 amps, thus popping the fuse. Their line of thought is "Well, the fuse is on your board, therefore it must be your fault." And then, on top of that, they're managing to handle our boards so roughly, they're doing things like breaking the fuse holder off. So they're getting upset with us because we "can't fix the problem", and I'm getting upset with them because they don't understand the problem nor how they are making it worse. All I can really do is continue to make detailed notes and bill them for time and parts, and let the powers that be sort it out with them. 3 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serenity Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 RTB Pro-Tips! New mini! SKU#03912 Remus Raducan, Blood Wolf Vampire 10-19-22. Started at 11:36 AM. https://www.twitch.tv/reaperminiatures 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Jack Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 4 hours ago, Froggy the Great said: Or you have cats or small children. The way my house is set up (two-story raised ranch), if I have certain doors or windows open when the wind blows, it will slam other doors shut... And when some doors are shut, the wind blowing through the house will rattle them like someone's trying to open them. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Count Urlik Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 4 hours ago, WhiteWulfe said: How it made it through soooo many meetings and actually got approved as a product for market we never knew. Still can't believe they felt they could sway the markets into accepting it by bringing in influencers as well. Years back I was asked by someone to do a "nutritional analysis" of machines for automatic juicing. I asked if they had heard of a blender, but they were really excited about one called the "Juicero" which used prepared packets of fruit, bluetooth-enabled bags, etc., etc... It was a comically terrible product, and I was pretty ruthless in my review (a $700 machine that squeezes a $6 foil packet of stale fruit). Now it actually gets studied in both engineering and business schools as a predictable failure. Never underestimate how poorly business folks can do market analysis and how terrible engineers can design things... 6 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteWulfe Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 (edited) 12 minutes ago, Count Urlik said: Years back I was asked by someone to do a "nutritional analysis" of machines for automatic juicing. I asked if they had heard of a blender, but they were really excited about one called the "Juicero" which used prepared packets of fruit, bluetooth-enabled bags, etc., etc... It was a comically terrible product, and I was pretty ruthless in my review (a $700 machine that squeezes a $6 foil packet of stale fruit). Now it actually gets studied in both engineering and business schools as a predictable failure. Never underestimate how poorly business folks can do market analysis and how terrible engineers can design things... Isn't that the one that worked better by just squeezing the packet between your hands, too? What saddens me with Keurig is they killed off machines that were genuinely useful like the Keurig Rivo - it was small, and made espresso. With proper pressure too. Not as perfectly as a proper machine like the Lavazza Blue ones, but it was also like a quarter the size, had a larger water tank ~and~ a garbage bin for 15 used pods (handy for those who like to pull two shots of espresso, or to brew for a friend as well). They axed a product they gave virtually no marketing to because it didn't sell well. Uhh, you didn't market it, this tends to happen if you don't market the thing. Was even under $200 CAD, and had the ability to steam milk too... The there was the Keurig Bolt. 64 ounces of coffee in less than two minutes. Pods that were actually recyclable. Was a massive hit with large offices, as well as restaurants and small cafes. It was so popular we had over a thousand installed in the first six months in western Canada alone. It got axed because it wasn't doing well in eastern Canada. Once again, if you don't tell customers about it, they don't know about it... Editing to add: like, the Bolt was so popular for us we were bringing them into our branch by the truckload. Head office didn't believe they were moving, but we literally had stacks of paper of customers WAITING for a machine (or six, or a dozen) and who had signed on for service for such... Edited October 19, 2022 by WhiteWulfe 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WhiteWulfe Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 1 hour ago, kristof65 said: I cannot seem to get them to comprehend that the real problem is NOT our circuit board, but whatever keeps drawing more than 3 amps, thus popping the fuse. Their line of thought is "Well, the fuse is on your board, therefore it must be your fault." And then, on top of that, they're managing to handle our boards so roughly, they're doing things like breaking the fuse holder off. Dot dot dot... It's part of standard industrial design to have a cheap, easily replaceable part as a failsafe to let you know that hey, something is wrong in this chain of things. It's way, way, waaaaay better to have a $0.20 fuse blow up than a $20k board or motor. My Voron Trident literally has three sets of fuses in it for a reason! (two as the first layer of defense at the filtered ac input, two or three different ones on the control board, and then a thermal fuse on the bed to kill power to the heater mat in case of thermal runaway or the mat detaching from the bed) But yet, it's the fuse. If you're going to blame the fuse, at least go through some basic troubleshooting so you can go "oops, we put quick react fuses in instead of slow blow", but at the same time... Wow, breaking the fuse holder off, and then... No, the issue is you, Sir Idiot (I mean customer), and the fact you refuse to look further than the safety device designed to protect other things... 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serenity Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 I heard at the end of Anne's stream that Luca has Covid and needs to sleep today after he streams on his channel, so Miniatures Den will not be showing today on Reaper's channel. He is still live on his own channel at the moment, though. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristof65 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 38 minutes ago, WhiteWulfe said: Dot dot dot... It's part of standard industrial design to have a cheap, easily replaceable part as a failsafe to let you know that hey, something is wrong in this chain of things. It's way, way, waaaaay better to have a $0.20 fuse blow up than a $20k board or motor. My Voron Trident literally has three sets of fuses in it for a reason! (two as the first layer of defense at the filtered ac input, two or three different ones on the control board, and then a thermal fuse on the bed to kill power to the heater mat in case of thermal runaway or the mat detaching from the bed) But yet, it's the fuse. If you're going to blame the fuse, at least go through some basic troubleshooting so you can go "oops, we put quick react fuses in instead of slow blow", but at the same time... Wow, breaking the fuse holder off, and then... No, the issue is you, Sir Idiot (I mean customer), and the fact you refuse to look further than the safety device designed to protect other things... Yep! The electronics engineers who designed these circuit boards were pretty good about that*. Just about every input/output that interfaces with the wash equipment (which we don't manufacture) is fused or protected in some way, to protect against field wiring errors and wash equipment failure. Over the years, I've seen those fuses save customers thousands of dollars (cumulatively, it's probably into the 6-digit range by now). Most people get it - especially the distributor techs - but occasionally I run across a site that doesn't. Best one was the site owner who hired a supposedly licensed electrician who didn't understand this point. I told the owner to fire his electrician and get someone competent on site - refused to work with that electrician. Found out later that part of the reason the fuse kept popping was because the field wiring was partially wrong. Guess who the original installing "electrician" was? *but not always. In the initial design of one circuit board, the engineer used a surface mount fuse that was soldered to the board for a fuse he didn't think would blow often. The engineer was right about how often it would blow - I can count on one hand the number of times that fuse has blown in the last 20 years - but he failed to anticipate how pissed off a customer would be about having to spend $500 to swap out an entire circuit board for a $1 fuse. When service ran the cost analysis on the first incident for a site that was still under warranty, it was determined they could have socketed that fuse for a thousand boards for the same cost. It's now socketed. Similar story from the place I used to work at in the 90s, pre car wash. Engineer was something like $0.20 over the target per unit cost management had dictated. He tried to get them to budge, but they wouldn't, so he eliminated all of the anti static protection on the input/output of the device, which was a couple of capacitors and zener diodes, because his only other option was a near complete redesign, which would lead to months of delays that management wouldn't approve either. When I started receiving back a number of units with the same output chip failure, I went to the engineer, and he told me to replace the chip and add the caps and diodes back in (spaces were still there on the circuit board). He also told me to give him a log of every unit I got back with this failure. After a few dozen failures, he went to management and said "Hey, I need to add a protection circuit to these units, it will cost about a quarter more per unit", and got them to agree by showing them they were spending more on fixing units. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitterwolf Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 There was a burglary at the end of our street. Someone climbed on the (flat) roof, opened the window of the old lady's bedroom with a crowbar. They took her jewelry. The lady is in her 90's and slept through the whole thing, she's almost deaf so she didn't hear the burglar breaking in and walking past her bed... I hope this person ends up in a special little corner of Hell. 1 14 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristof65 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 42 minutes ago, Glitterwolf said: There was a burglary at the end of our street. Someone climbed on the (flat) roof, opened the window of the old lady's bedroom with a crowbar. They took her jewelry. The lady is in her 90's and slept through the whole thing, she's almost deaf so she didn't hear the burglar breaking in and walking past her bed... I hope this person ends up in a special little corner of Hell. That's horrible. First thought that crossed my mind though was that the thief was someone who knew she was almost deaf. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegazus Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 1 minute ago, kristof65 said: That's horrible. First thought that crossed my mind though was that the thief was someone who knew she was almost deaf. This. My Dad’s garage was robbed once. Same garage where six dogs who did not like strangers lived. Gee, I wonder if was someone familiar to the beasts? Hmm. Could be. 4 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glitterwolf Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 1 minute ago, kristof65 said: That's horrible. First thought that crossed my mind though was that the thief was someone who knew she was almost deaf. I think the thief also had a hunch that she had jewelry. As it is her house is next to the same parking lot where my license plates were stolen in May. It's easy access and easy getaway in that little spot. Our house is on the other side, there are little poles to keep cars out (we can remove them for loading/unloading our cars etc). There's a little square in the middle. We have solar lights with movement sensors around the house, our Brutus, good locks and blinders for the windows at night. Also some battery operated lights in the house at night so it looks occupied. The birds,squirrels and other critters often trigger the sensor lights in the garden so our place might look alive anyway.. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kristof65 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 (edited) 7 minutes ago, Pegazus said: This. My Dad’s garage was robbed once. Same garage where six dogs who did not like strangers lived. Gee, I wonder if was someone familiar to the beasts? Hmm. Could be. My old neighborhood in CO had a string of burglaries. Common elements were that it was always on weekends people were away, and all of the victims had kids in the elementary and/or middle schools. A set of brothers in those schools were strongly suspected, but never got caught. But funny how the burglaries stopped happening when the family moved away. Edited October 19, 2022 by kristof65 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cranky Dog Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 1 hour ago, WhiteWulfe said: Dot dot dot... It's part of standard industrial design to have a cheap, easily replaceable part as a failsafe to let you know that hey, something is wrong in this chain of things. It's way, way, waaaaay better to have a $0.20 fuse blow up than a $20k board or motor. 46 minutes ago, kristof65 said: The electronics engineers who designed these circuit boards were pretty good about that*. Just about every input/output that interfaces with the wash equipment (which we don't manufacture) is fused or protected in some way, to protect against field wiring errors and wash equipment failure. Over the years, I've seen those fuses save customers thousands of dollars (cumulatively, it's probably into the 6-digit range by now). Most people get it - especially the distributor techs - but occasionally I run across a site that doesn't. As a mechanical engineer, this is also something some of us learn along the way. If something is going to break for going above the specs, make it something inexpensive and easy to replace. Good product designers also do this. Years ago, I remember a conversation about a complaint about a camera's battery door that popped off when he accidentally dropped the camera while replacing the batteries as it was held by a basic clip. Then someone pointed out that it if wasn't on that clip, it would have completely broken off and would need to be sent off for repair. On a parallel: Though I haven't seen it confirmed, so I have some doubts, I once heard that Big Bill work shirts have purposely weak stitching. So if by some mishap a worker gets his sleeve caught in a machine, he can rip it off at the seams. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inarah Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 8 hours ago, Chaoswolf said: DH is going through this right now with dueling managers. One keeps setting up meetings and trying to get projects expedited, and the other manager is having meetings to remind people that proper review processes must be followed before anything can be released, and a third is pinging him multiple times a day asking for status reports. It's a wonder there aren't more workplace shootings. 1 hour ago, Glitterwolf said: There was a burglary at the end of our street. Someone climbed on the (flat) roof, opened the window of the old lady's bedroom with a crowbar. They took her jewelry. The lady is in her 90's and slept through the whole thing, she's almost deaf so she didn't hear the burglar breaking in and walking past her bed... I hope this person ends up in a special little corner of Hell. Someone who undoubtedly knew she had nice jewelry worth stealing, and where it was. Someone young enough to climb up to a roof. Relatives or friends of, most likely. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts