Field Service Technician on FST Life

11 posts tagged Field Service Technician. Read the guide: What Is a Field Service Technician?.

Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
25 Oct 2026
The most qualified person isn't always the best fault finder.
I've seen it both ways. The degree qualified engineer hits the checklist, finds nothing obvious, swaps parts, power-cycles. Fault's back next week. The other type won't walk away from a fault they haven't found. They'll pull the same connector three times. Come back after dinner and a cheeky beer. Sleep on it. Those are the ones who find: • The pin not quite seated. • The wire clamped on insulation instead of copper. • The intermittent contact that only drops under load. I know who I'd rather have on a breakdown.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
25 Oct 2026
12 years in field service, you pick up a few tricks.
Intermittent overspeed fault on a servo motor. Cycle the power, fault clears, runs fine for a few days, then it's back. Drive replaced. Motor replaced. Wiring "checked". When someone says they checked the wiring, it's usually a visual check. Doesn't catch this. My trick: run a long wire to the pin at the motor plug, continuity test from the far end, measure resistance on each wire individually. Should be around 1 ohm. Pink wire came back at 70 ohms. That's not a wire fault, that's a connection fault. Pin wasn't properly seated in the plug. Faults like this get power-cycled away for years without ever getting fixed. The drive and motor were never the problem.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
24 Oct 2026
More often than I can count, the long journey has ended with a straightforward fix.
This was one of them. Intermittent faults are the ones that get your brain working. No pattern, no error code, machine runs fine for days then stops without warning. Power cycle, back to normal. Repeat. When someone says it happens randomly, that's the signal to look harder, not accept it. Attention to detail is what separates a proper diagnosis from a parts swap and a prayer. The photo says it all. Screws too long, plug not properly secured. The slightest vibration or movement interrupts the connection. Machine stops, customer power cycles, runs fine for another few days. Meanwhile the waste from every unplanned stop is quietly adding up. The fix took minutes. Finding it was the job.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
15 Oct 2026
The limit switches on this gearbox exist for one reason. To stop it destroying itself.
A fault was suspected on them. Instead of troubleshooting it, someone unplugged them and carried on. Classic... No fault. No protection. Just a gearbox running blind with nothing to stop it going past its limits. Some people treat safety devices like they're the problem. They're not the problem. They're the thing standing between a five minute fix and a week of downtime, or worse. Bypassing a safety device isn't a fix. It's a debt. And eventually someone pays it.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
24 Sep 2026
Would you replace this motor coupling?
Motor's been running like this for who knows how long. Went in to replace the motors. Pulled the couplings and found them cracked through. New motors, damaged couplings, customer's got no spares on the shelf. Install anyway and risk taking out a brand new motor with a knackered coupling, or hold the mission and wait on parts that should've been stock in the first place.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
17 Sep 2026
When it comes to engineering, more is not always better.
Machine calls for cooled water between 15 and 20 degrees. Customer was feeding it 5. From their side that's a free win, colder water, faster cooling, no downside. The photo is the downside. Factory humidity plus that supply temp and you get this. Condensation dripping below. Fix isn't complicated. Just need to install an actuated valve. Getting the customer to believe colder isn't always better, that's the actual job.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
10 Sep 2026
"Finished" can mean wildly different things to people.
Take the bracket below as an example, it's functional but not painted and burrs left on... Does it do the job - Yes. Is it beautiful - No Is it safe - No When I was an apprentice, many moons ago, if I left a burr on a piece of metal my boss would get me sweeping the workshop for an hour. We all think differently, but when something is going to be used for years an extra 30 minutes with a file and a lick of paint goes a long way.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
3 Sep 2026
Machine had been down for several months.
Replaced a comms cable to get everything back online, then the fun started... Running production, nothing was reliable, signals jumping all over the place. Time to make a thorough inspection. That's when you find the small stuff. Loose mechanical brackets, shielding disconnected, sub D plugs not secure, a missing screw on a light emitter for an optic sensor. On their own these issues aren't a show stopper, but added together you get a very unreliable machine doing weird things. When it's a breakdown the priority is getting back into production, not checking every screw and bracket. But spending the extra time to do a proper job pays off in the future.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
27 Aug 2026
Machine down repeatedly, cause unknown. Current solution: power off and on.
The signal kept dropping. No pattern, no error code. The machine would run fine for hours, then stop "randomly". Nothing is random. The cause is in the photo on the left. Wire insulation was clamped under the screw instead of the copper. Sometimes the strands made contact. Sometimes they didn't. On the right is how it should look. Crimped, correct strip length, nothing under the screw but copper. A hard fault costs you an hour. An intermittent one can cost weeks, because everyone starts by suspecting the expensive parts first. That is the real price of a shortcut during installation. Finding the right Field Service Technician can be priceless.
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
6 Aug 2026
A problem I regularly come across as a field service technician.
Cable shielding disconnected. Customer complains that the machine is going into fault, after a reset the fault clears... Often the importance of shielding is not understood. It isn't just a formality, it protects signal cables from electrical noise. Disconnect it or ground it badly, and you get intermittent faults that look completely unrelated, comms errors, false triggers, sensors reading badly. You can actually see it on a scope, noise on signal lines that should be clean. If you're chasing a "random" fault on a machine, check the shields before you check anything else. Fast and easy first check!
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Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
30 Jul 2026
Being a field service technician means working weekends.
Today's job, machine keeps running after stop button pressed, serious safety concern. My money's on a missing or inverted index signal at the encoder. Best way to confirm... put an oscilloscope on it. Multimeter won't show you a dropped pulse. This is the kind of fault independent FSTs fix every week.
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