Sometimes during the early stages of a program development, the question will come up; how valuable is an infrared program? You may hear individuals ask, “Do we really need it and the hassle that goes with it?”
I was working as a new thermagrapher at a very large industrial complex – I was only about 4 months out of a level one infrared course at the time. During an inspection, I came across a ventilation fan starter cabinet in a section of MCC gear that had a problem at the line-side for the fused disconnect contained in the cabinet. This fan was a 5 horsepower, 480 volt motor and was used to pull air through a section of the building. It in no way affected the operation of plant, or so the area manager for operations told me when he cancelled the repair order. I pleaded my case to no avail. I decided that I would check on this fan monthly and continue to write both the reports and the repair orders. They kept getting cancelled with notes if the motor failed they would lock the fan motor out and continue without it.
Feeling this was the wrong way to approach the problem (the mentality of “ignore it and it will go away”), I kept writing the report and repair orders. After about six months of this, the fault progressed into a “thermal runaway” condition and failed phase to phase at two a.m. Now, the MCC section that contained the fan in question was main equipment necessary to run the plant, either by interlocks or directly affecting the operation.
I was called into the engineering group office first thing in the morning after the failure of the fan. I was told point-blank the infrared program I was trying to implement was a total waste of time and money. At this point in the conversation, I had no idea what they were referring to and was confused. Then, I was informed a complete shutdown had occurred that night due to an electrical failure I should have caught in the inspection I completed two weeks prior to the failure. Asking for details about the shutdown, I discovered the 800 amp fuses that feed the MCC section had blown and the interlock system had shut down the plant.
Research found the little wall fan I had been trying to get repaired had failed. I pulled the history of all my reports, the cancelled repair orders to my defense, and showed the fault had been reported but no other action had been taken. It was determined it would have no effect on the operation of the plant if it failed. I pointed out the fault was above the fuse protection for the wall fan cabinet and when the failure occurred the only other fuse protection to clear the fault was at the 800 amp main for the MCC section.
The point of the matter is, the location of a fault can be more important than the criticality of the equipment. If the fault had been below the wall fan fuses, there would have not been a shutdown of the plant. After this incident, the infrared program basically had a “blank check” for costs associated to the program. To my delight, all repair orders were acted upon with very little or no questions asked.