My customers range from Fortune 100 Companies to Mom and Pop shops. I actually prefer helping the smaller companies, given a choice (I am not given a choice), they are more appreciative, keep their accounts current and are actually happy when I am able to keep them from sending everyone home for the day.  However, the one thing that is invariable from small to big companies is that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies to everyone. In simple terms, the Second Law states that the instant you stop putting something together, it starts coming apart. That holds true from galaxies to servo drives.

The corollary to this is that the way you keep things from falling apart is by putting them back together again. That can be from tightening a nut (“They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.” -Rudyard Kipling “The Sons of Martha”) to being sure the drive doesn’t have dust filling it and preventing cooling. It also means replacing things when they break. That costs money. We work with our clients to be sure that the money they spend is the most effective. Sometimes, however, we are unable to save them from themselves. Offered for your consideration:

The client that decided the factory battery with the wiring harness was too expensive, and went out and bought his own battery, disconnected the old factory battery from the unit, and very carefully cut the old wiring harness off and soldered it to the new battery. I congratulated him on his thriftiness and speed, as once he disconnected the battery, he had 90 seconds to do all that before his PROGRAM EVAPORATED. Since he didn’t have a Known Good Backup (or any backup at all), and the OEM was out of business, they wound up selling the machine for scrap.

The client who lost the display on his power supply and decided that he could connect the display (and boards) behind the drive to the power supply. He was quite surprised when he blew both units.

The client who decided to put an Ebay purchased unit in and it blew up the entire string of DKC drives. That drive cost him 60k in blown drives, not to count the downtime and lost orders. They did stay in business long enough to pay the bill to us, but not long enough to become a longer term customer…

We will work with you to make sure you use the most cost effective answers. We will help in any way we can. You have to listen though, we can’t save every customer from themselves.