Guessing is the most expensive tool in the building.
Fault finding on production machinery: what is actually wrong, proven by measurement, before anybody orders a component. Vibration, bearing noise, alignment, and separating a mechanical cause from an electrical or hydraulic one.
- Open 24 hours, seven days
- No hourly minimum
- What the job runs, told up front
- Findings written down
Parts swapping is a gamble you place with your own money
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has run a maintenance department. A machine misbehaves, the most likely component gets replaced, and the fault either goes away or it does not. When it does not, the next most likely component gets replaced. Three parts later somebody finds the actual cause, which was often something that cost very little, and the machine has been down across all of it.
That approach is tempting because it feels like progress. Something is being done, a box is being opened, a part is going on. But it has a real price: the components themselves, the labor to fit each one, and the production hours lost while the process runs its course. On a machine where an hour of downtime has a number attached to it, the arithmetic almost always favors spending the first hour finding out instead.
When people call us inA fault nobody can pin down, a machine that has already had parts thrown at it, a failure that keeps coming back, or a noise that is clearly getting worse and nobody wants to be the one who ignored it.
What the job runsYou are told before we start, and the diagnosis is quoted separately from any repair so you can decide what happens next with the numbers in front of you.
Where we goProduction floors, wineries, packing houses and yards through Napa and Solano, plus regular runs into Contra Costa and Alameda. The full coverage area.
Mechanical, electrical or hydraulic: narrow it before you open it
Most industrial faults present identically from the operator’s position. The machine is slow, weak, noisy, hot, or it stops. That description fits a worn bearing, a failing motor, a contactor dropping a phase, a relief valve out of adjustment and a control device that has gone intermittent. Five different repairs, five different costs, one symptom.
So the first job is isolation, and it is mostly a matter of asking what a given cause would have to be doing elsewhere. If a drive is pulling high current, something is making it work harder, and that something is usually mechanical. If the machine is slow but current has dropped rather than risen, the motor is not fighting anything and the problem is more likely in the fluid side or the load itself. If the fault comes and goes with temperature, that points at connections and components that change with heat, not at anything that wears.
Each of those has a test that settles it, and the tests are quick compared with dismantling. Current on all three legs. Pressure at more than one point. Temperature across a bearing housing before and after a run. Whether the fault follows the machine or follows the panel. An hour spent this way routinely saves a component that was about to be replaced for no reason.
I would rather charge you for an hour of finding out than for three parts that were never the problem.
Patrick Freeman, owner
What gets measured
Not every call needs all of this. The symptom decides which tests are worth running, and there is no value in performing a survey on a machine whose fault is obvious once somebody competent looks at it.
Vibration and bearing condition
Where the noise originates, whether it tracks shaft speed, and how much running time is realistically left before it takes something else with it.
Shaft and coupling alignment
Checked properly rather than eyeballed, because misalignment destroys bearings and seals quietly over months while the machine appears to run normally.
Current and load
What the motor is actually drawing on each leg, compared against nameplate, which separates a struggling machine from a failing supply.
Hydraulic pressure and flow
Measured at several points in the circuit, since a worn pump, a bypassing valve and a leaking cylinder all look the same from outside.
Control and drive faults
Fault histories read and interpreted, control circuits traced, and the distinction drawn between a broken drive and a drive reporting a real condition.
Thermal checks
Bearing housings, motors, terminations and gearboxes. Heat is usually the first measurable sign that something has started to go wrong.
Intermittent faults are the ones worth calling about
The machine that fails reliably is the easy one. The hard one is the machine that runs perfectly for six days and stops on the seventh, or throws a fault at four in the afternoon and never in the morning. Those are the faults that get lived with, worked around, and eventually cause a failure at the worst possible moment.
An intermittent fault is not random. It depends on a condition, and the condition is the clue. If it appears once the machine is hot, something is expanding: a connection losing contact, a component drifting out of tolerance, a clearance closing up. If it appears under heavy load and not light load, the machine is being pushed past something that is already marginal. If it appears after a washdown, water is getting somewhere it should not. If it started after other work was done, that is where to look first regardless of how unrelated it seems.
The practical approach is to catch it in the act rather than inspect it afterward. That means being there when the machine is doing the thing it does, which is why these visits often get scheduled around a shift rather than at a convenient hour. We run around the clock anyway, so lining a visit up with the four in the afternoon fault is ordinary scheduling. It is also why the history matters so much: a maintenance log that records when the fault appears is frequently what makes the diagnosis possible in one visit instead of three.
Questions before booking a diagnostic visit
Describe the machine and what it is doing wrong. A few minutes on the phone often narrows it down before anyone drives anywhere.
We have already replaced two parts and it still does it. Is that a problem?
It is useful information, not a problem. Knowing what has been changed rules those components out and often points directly at what was missed, particularly when a replacement part failed again quickly. Bring the history: what was replaced, when, and whether the fault changed at all afterward. The one thing worth avoiding is replacing a third component on the same reasoning that produced the first two.
Can you diagnose it without stopping production?
Often yes, and frequently the machine needs to be running for the useful measurements to exist at all. Current draw, vibration, temperature and pressure readings mean nothing on a stationary machine. Where something has to be opened or isolated, that gets scheduled into a shutdown window rather than forced into the middle of a shift, and you will hear which category your fault falls into early in the conversation.
Do we have to use you for the repair afterward?
No. The diagnosis stands on its own and you get the findings in writing with the measurements behind them. Some plants have us do the repair on the same visit because we are already there with the machine open, and some take the report and schedule it with their own maintenance crew. Both are fine, and the price for the diagnosis does not change based on which you pick.
The machine is noisy but still working. Is it worth looking at now?
Usually, yes, because noise is the cheap stage of a failure. A bearing that has started making itself heard can normally be replaced during a planned window for the cost of the bearing. The same bearing left alone until it seizes can take out a shaft, a housing or a coupling, and it will choose its own moment to do it, which is rarely convenient. Catching it early is the difference between scheduled work and an emergency.
What happens if the fault turns out to be something you do not repair?
You still get the diagnosis, which is what you were paying for. If the answer sits with a licensed electrical contractor, a controls specialist or the equipment manufacturer, we say so plainly and hand over measurements precise enough that they are not starting from scratch. Being told honestly where a fault lives is worth considerably more than a vague answer from somebody reluctant to admit the job is not theirs.
How is a diagnostic visit priced?
You hear one figure for the diagnosis before we set out, and it covers the trip as well as the time on the machine. There is no hourly minimum, so a fault that turns out to be obvious does not get billed as though it took all afternoon. If a repair follows, that is quoted separately once the cause is known, and nothing proceeds until you have agreed to it.
Describe the fault, not the part you suspect.
What the machine does, when it started, what conditions bring it on, and what has already been replaced. That is the information that makes a single visit enough. The phone is answered at every hour.