Saved By 'The Gringo': A Story About a Drive Tech at Repair Zone

I was contacted by Raul; he is from a company that supplies stamped dies for Volkswagen in southern Texas. He badly needed an Allen Bradley 1391B-ESAA 45-AQB AC Controller. We had 1 in stock. He arranged payment and told us it was “my head if I can’t get this machine making parts by Thursday.” It was Tuesday morning, coming up on noon.

I pulled our unit from inventory to be assessed by Adam, our Allen Bradley Drive expert. This unit was in poor health and needed a full day plus of refurbishment. A daunting task to be sure, especially since Adam was finishing up another rush repair. He determined that the IGBT’s were bad and the driver board. He immediately disassembled entire unit and washed it thoroughly before baking it.

He got a matching set of IGBT’s and installed. 2 phases on the driver board had bad components and needed to match up some diodes, 2 resistors, and 2 transistors. A combination of new parts and existing driver board parts were used to replace bad components.

Once everything was soldered in, it was time for reassembly. Adam then hooked unit up to our 1391 control test module. It was found that 1 of the 3 channels wasn’t firing. You could hear it single-phasing during the run-test. Adam, looking a bit disappointed, quickly pulled unit and took it apart. We had about 1 hour to get this unit to UPS terminal, which was ‘last call’ and another city away.

Adam narrowed it down to the hybrid on the driver board. “Finally”, he said, “I think I got it all figured out, it makes sense now.” Without a moment to spare, Adam replaced the hybrid, which took out 2 other diodes that needed replaced as well. Confident that he solved all the issues, he put it back together and got it back on the test module.

He applied power and switched between channels and ran beautifully through all 3 phases! You could hear the difference: it was a clean sound of the rotor turning on the servo motor in both directions – like a symphony to our ears!!

The drive was quickly foamed and boxed up as I then raced to the next city to drop it off at the UPS terminal, where an employee was loading the last of the boxes onto a semi. I had 11 minutes to spare!

I then contacted Raul, who was anxiously awaiting, and said we had made it and he will have the drive in his hands early tomorrow morning. I sent him a picture of Adam with the drive running and told him that this was ‘The Gringo’ that was responsible for the near-miracle that had taken place. Raul said,” from now on I would change Batman for Adam and if he comes to Texas many tequilas for him!! Thank you my friends!!"