Industrial Electrical Shortcomings:

Mother Of All Hidden Faults

As I always say the mother of all hidden faults is the Profibus fault. This is not just a dialogue it is based on practical experience. When I meet different folks in the same field and have a discussion about the issues about the plants, The Profibus fault usually gets the top position most of the time in our discussion.

Diagnosing hidden faults is not a bed of roses where it's a nightmare. It needs a lot of experience, skill, and talent. Sometimes, it takes fewer minutes but most of the time it does not come to you easily. It irritates you from time to time. By the way, faults actually come to teach you it's my optics towards any fault. Whenever you receive any complaint, there could be two approaches in your mind.

1. Ah! It is going to suck a lot of time and energy.
2. Wow! We will get something new today against this fault

What's your mindset? whenever you receive any complaint you know better than me so what does come first in your mind? If everything is going fantastic and there is no complaint in your factory, you will not get your hands on it. you are just killing the time and as you know the time and tide wait for the none.

I have faced the Profibus fault many times earlier and solved it too. Once again the Profibus fault started to come. Initially, it came once in a blue moon but gradually the frequency of the fault appearance increased. We tried to troubleshoot in between but we could not.

As days passed, it started to get serious attention. Now this fault has been the talk of the town among the operators. Initially, I could not find any clue about the overall fault but later on, I got hints about some of the nodes.

The fault is coming from these nodes and only because of the shielding issue. We reconnected the M12 mater connectors many times but the result was the same. It stops for a few hours, and later on, it starts to come again and again.

It has been a headache for us. I hit upon an idea and I made it applied and it worked and It has been working till today. Have a look at the images below:

I presumed If either one of the connector's shields is working, make both of the wire's shields short before connectors apart from the connectors. If one of the connectors works, both cables' shields will be grounded. It was an innovative idea. It work and worked.

The above images are related to the Profibus issue. These are linear Micro Pulse Transducers mounted on block-making machines. This machine generates vigorous vibrations because due to this sort of vigorous vibrations molds are filled with concrete. If there is no severe vibration, there will not be a good filling of mold with concrete, and if there is a severe vibration, the Profibus connectors will get loose from time to time.

So we are in between. I hope you are going to enjoy this article and will get something new. I would say thanks for the time that you bestow to read my article.