Sometimes You Need To Know Your Spare Circuit Board Works

Did you ever look for an electronic spare part, and you plugged it in, and it just didn’t work?

This happened recently to our client in the middle of a production run. The monitor mounted on the machine control panel went blank suddenly and the machine just stopped. The client didn’t realize the monitor had an integrated PLC that controlled the full operation of the machine so when the monitor stopped, so did the production run. Our client plugged in their spare monitor but as it was brand new, the machine program had not been installed so this avenue of repair was a dead end. After the screams died down, our client brought us the monitor which we realized is an intelligent Krone iPanel.

After dismantling, we found water damage which had affected a significant portion of the circuitry. The water ingress must have been over a long period as the damage included rusted connector plugs and many grounded ICs and capacitors. Amazingly we also found the short circuit cascaded through much of the other circuitry even though there was no burn or soot deposits.

To refurbish the iPanel, many of the discrete electronic parts had to be removed and the board reconstructed. Great care had to be taken to ensure the program was kept intact especially during the cleaning and power up stages of the refurbishment. The panel was recently installed back into the client’s machine and everything started up perfectly. A copy of the program was taken so this situation shouldn’t happen again.

Our client was extremely happy as he thought the entire mulit-million dollar machine would be rendered useless and we were able to bring it back to life. We have now been asked to audit the other iPanels installed in other machines as a Preventative Maintenance routine.

If you have invested in spares but not sure if they still work, or any other equipment that requires repair or refurbishment, contact us at rc@rom-control.com.au or send us a message at   https://www.rom-control.com.au/contact-us/