Spent 4 hours chasing a burn-in that was just a bad thermocouple wire

I was dialing in a new furnace lining last Tuesday and kept getting wild temp swings on the control panel. After checking the burner settings, the gas pressure, and even the lining itself (waste of a morning), I finally swapped the thermocouple wire and bam, steady readings in 15 minutes. The crimp connector had a tiny bit of corrosion inside, which I only caught because I wiggled it by accident. Has anyone else had a simple connection issue that ate up a whole shift before you figured it out?

2 comments

2 Comments

michael_patel17d ago

Had a buddy who was losing his mind over a CNC lathe that kept throwing a position error. He swapped encoders, replaced the servo drive, even pulled the ballscrew to check for backlash. Turned out the cable shielding got pinched in the wire track, causing intermittent noise on the feedback line. Took him like 6 hours and a ton of cussing before he caught it. Told me he's never trusting a cable again without doing a continuity test first.

paulm9517d ago

Did your buddy ever find the bad ground on that old conveyor system? A guy I used to work with spent a whole Saturday troubleshooting a finicky pick-and-place robot. He replaced the whole control board, the motor driver, and even rewired the safety loop before he noticed a loose screw on the ground lug. Tightened it down with a quarter turn and the robot worked perfect the rest of the week. He still brings it up whenever someone mentions a simple fix.