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what is the paygrade for the guy who is supposed to pull the lever? 
I would apply for the nightshift but that isnât a recliner chair in the picture. I would need accommodations. 
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Good question
Probably around 40 plus incentive 10 percent
Nights are the worst you have to sit there and watch two of those things
When something goes wrong you have to take over
Mechanical contrivance to stop the machinery in a fault condition and a paper recorder
The safety computer from the 00 that replaced it
Main pic from the 90s itself an upgrade from one from the 80s
Motor from the 40s
Drive from the 80s
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It is all good. i would be out of a job in 12 months anyway. I would literally program my way out of that one in 6 months, and they would catch me sleeping in 6 months, and then would be out of a jobâŚ
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Not a chance.
The ABB guys have the safety controller all locked up.
But you can access the Modicon.
Its all write protected though you cant do anything to it.
I knew the designer ( not well but I learned a lot from him )
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Oh! that might take a bit longer. Challenge accepted! Where do I sign up?
I wonder how long it will take to reverse engineer the modicon. Then I can start with the abb stuff, and open source it all, and then get fired because of all the mt dew bottles stacked up that I didnât have time to take to recycling.
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Sean,
When you get to a certain age, you learn the meaning of âIf it aint broke, donât fix itâ. And the other: "The enemy of âGood Enoughâ is âI Can Make it Betterâ. I admire Mr. Wallace for being able to work on that menagerie of old, and older equipment. You also have to consider they donât generally build quality anymore, just cheap. 
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Oh I can respect working on the variety of equipment⌠but it reminds me of the observation that everyone has this mission critical black box in their machine room they have no idea what it does or how it works anymore, they donât have a spare and their entire organization collapses without it.
As far as better, I donât know if that is true across the board. Simpler, easier to repair certainly. Some things are cheap, that were previously unaffordable. And some things
are better. And some stuff that everyone thought was great wasnt really all that cmpared to today. Some stuff was actually built better especially when you get into niche markets. It really just depends.
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Iâve been fortunate for decades as until the shop fire I had 480v 3 phase and then used transformers to step it down and up as needed.
When I was at Mike Anthonyâs shop for his woodgas event I âdiscoveredâ what it was like to make 3 phase using a 3 phase motor that he simply had resting on the floor. His method used a small diameter pull rope wrapped around the armature which was pulled briskly to get the motor spinning fast and then turn on the power to the motor to get it to run on single phase. The 3 windings from the motor were supplying the input power to the machines. Then any machine that was needed could be simply turned off an on at will.
VFDâs have come down in price substantially for small sized units. I canât comment on how robust they are compared to a rotary converter.
I had purchased an elevator grade VFD and connected it to my small Sheldon lathe. It worked nice. It was capable of single or 3 phase input and single or 3 phase output. 0 to 800hz. I decided to mount it to the headstock area of the lathe and had to disconnect a few connectors inside to access the mounting screws. I switched a couple leads that had matching connectors when reassembling it and damaged the unit. Dang. That was a bad evening. The manufacturer - Hitachi had ceased supporting it.
Once I got used to starting the motor I could appreciate the simplicity of the method. Mike commented that it wasnât very efficient.
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It really isnât that uncommon for utilities to have and support clients with older equipment. There are several pockets in the US that still use 2-phase and a few industries that use the old 2 phase equipment. It is uncommon but it still exists. His 90s plc, isnât uncommon in a utility or industry setting that is only 30 years old, that is kind of middle age for utility equipment. Utilities and industry usually run by both your mottoâs.
IF we had âfree energyâ device that was only utility scale, it would take 30 years to deploy across the US.
Magic blue smoke, is almost never a great evening.
It is too bad it happened when it did stuff like ESRâs and hot air guns, and digital scopes, hit the chineseium market, and you can get somewhere close to accurate tools for fairly cheap now. Which wasnât the case when you VFD died.
The price of mosfets tanked. I had a board marked in my shopping cart dropped from 39 dollars to 9 dollars over the last 6 years. The chip by itself was 30 dollars at the time. I donât know whether I was more amazed it was in stock or that the price had dropped that much for the board.
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As. Matter of fact
Modicon gave inco a phone call at a point in the early 90s
They asked how it was that one of our processors had been returned to them for repair from a rival mining company
Investigation revelled a processor had been stollen from critical stores
When it all came out there were stollen prints people fired charges laid and a clone of the ccnm hoist control had been built at another mine by a rival multinational miner
But it did not run because of technical issues
We had a long history of developing bleeding edge stuff
But since the buy out and new ownership they fired all the engineers and smart people
Now we ainât got the brains left to light a fart on fire
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AM track
The use a 25 cycle two phase system to run electric trains
These little steeple cabs were 80 years old at retirement
They also ran on 25 cycle single phase lines not that much different from AM track too
How they made it was even more interesting
A Scott t transformer converter 3 to 2 phase 4 wire
Then this was split again into single phase sections to run the locomotives
The motors were ac traction but not what you think
They were repulsion
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I was working at Algoma steel
They had reliance drives all analog and silpacs from the 60s and 70s
We had these two old guys that had a shop full of parts and test equipment from the 60s 70s who kept this stuff running building boards as required sometimes designing and building in house complete drives from scraps and spares
These guys could tune a drive by listening too it
Pretty dam cool!!!
They liked me because I was familiar with a lot of this
In a matter of months I was installing Ignatrons and servicing swapping boards changing tubes and learning how to adjust the drives
If was some of the happiest and most rewarding work I ever did
Now Iâm a parts changer
And I really donât care much about it now
No investment in people no parts no repairs
We just replace when it blows up
Some days I get to do something interesting but most of the time I just vegetate and wait for my pension to come
They wanted to simplify and dum this place down
They succeeded itâs so simple now they can hire monkeys off the street to run it into the ground
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How many HP?
I was buying (pre-covid) single to 3phase units for around 70 bucks that would handle 2hp which has been plenty for my milling machines and drill presses.
Go look at ebay.
Oh my gosh! the price has gone up a lot! for example:
Glad I still have a spare on the shelf!
Best of luck!
Ben
I donât know what failed. It didnât smoke or such. I do not believe the power portion is damaged. The connectors were for the voltage/frequency input section as I recall. Probably 24g wires going to the connectors.
I checked for more information. It was made/labled as EMS, Inc but also known as a Yaskawa VariSpeed VS-616 G3 model G3U401xxx AC input 480v 3ph 40 amps output 32amp 1 minute 20hp
It happened about 9 years ago. I talked to a company representative in Wisconsin who said they thought they knew what had failed. They still had folks there who were familiar with the units. I could send it to them and they could take a look at it. I had no idea what they would charge for repairs. With shipping cost to them and return costs of about $150 - $170, I was concerned that Iâd have more into getting it repaired than it was worth. Now shipping would likely be nearer $200.
I still see similar used or units offered for sale on ebay and other marketplace locations in the $1,000. price range.