Our Operating & Maintenance instructions state that, amongst other things, our wall-mounted units must be securely bolted to the wall prior to initiation. Here’s why…
We were recently contacted by one of our customers to advise us that a compressor we had sent (to replace one which had failed) was suffering from electrical problems. We are proud of our quality and workmanship (but of course we are not perfect), our ISO9001 system stresses the importance of understanding any problem and developing mitigations and we take any issue seriously whether it’s a warranty claim or not.
We first asked the customer to send photos and videos of the problem (this is always a helpful first line of support no matter what type of assistance our customers need, and we will soon have the ability to do this via our website contact form). The videos confirmed that the contactor and on-delay timer had come loose, and the timer had intermittent connections.
To cut a long story short, we visited the site (this is something that we will do on occasion if possible, subject to charging if a warranty claim turns out not to be a manufacturing problem, in order to help our customers and their clients). The contactor/timer assembly was replaced in order to enable the compressor to run – this it did, but a significant amount of vibration was immediately noted, which after 10 minutes caused the on-delay timer to fail – this short video shows the contactor box in the process of being ‘shaken to death’.
Fortunately, we were carry a second on-delay timer and this was replaced, however it was quickly discovered that one of the bolts holding the compressor bracket to the wall was not fastened. Once this had been secured, the starter box vibration stopped entirely – this short video shows that ‘after’ vibration is not visible at all (the timer lights are on, so the compressor is running, honestly!) – and the compressor continued to run until the system was up to pressure.
The ‘before’ and ‘after’ videos speak for themselves, but it’s interesting to note that there was very little noticeable vibration of the compressor frame itself; clearly this was being amplified during transmission from the pump unit (which sits on a baseplate with rubber dampers) to the starter box bracket.
We urge all installers to note that although our products are designed for ‘industrial’ use, they have to be supported by components that may suffer if not treated with care (and dare we say affection – our technicians do take it personally when units come back for repair that appear not to have been ‘loved’!).