Neal Wareing
Field service technician and founder, FindFST
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.
