Troubleshooting problems with CPT equipment, Piezo meter, inclinometers and data acquisition equipment

Conributed by Haresh Karamchandani

A Dutch engineering company was introduced and recommended to NATC by an existing iron ore mining company client who have contracted the former for consultancy on improving the port facilities for exports once they start production.

The customer walked into our swanky Randall Street office one morning and complained that his Durabook laptop was not booting. We got down to diagnosing what may be the problem. Our technician opened up the laptop and discovered that one of the RAM cards was faulty and this was causing the problem.

The RAM card was promptly replaced and the laptop was able to boot and function normally. 

One more happy client added to our ever growing list!

The same day, late in the evening, I get a call from the same client saying that they were having problems with their Data acquisition equipment and they were not able to get some important readings due to communication errors between their CPT- Inclinometer equipment and their laptop.

We set up an appointment for early the next morning and the client picked us up from our office and drove us to their site inside the Freeport. They had very conveniently set up their working space inside a 20’ container positioned right at the edge of the pier. They were conducting deep water measurements using the highly sophisticated equipment. They were supposed to present their findings and recommendation for suitability of the Monrovia port to accommodate huge 200,000 ton vessels for loading and export of the iron ore.

This was the first time we saw an inclinometer (looks like a missile) and CPT equipment. According to the client there were only 3 manufacturers for this kind of equipment. The magnetometer readings were not communicated for some reason. The client had already spent 5 hours trying to troubleshoot along with the Dutch manufacturer, to no avail or solution.

We got down to the job.

Normally this kind of problem could be resolved by manipulating the COM port settings. This did not work.

We then tried replacing the laptop with another one. Software was available. This too did not work!

The Inclinometer readings were being displayed, but for some reason the magnetometer readings were not working.

We decided to bring over the equipment to our workshop and after opening up the equipment we checked the circuit board and discovered that deep inside, a capacitor was not responsive. THIS was the problem! 

This may have been caused due to a power surge, the most common factor that damages equipment in Liberia. Unfortunately we could not replace the faulty capacitor, but the client was quite pleased with our diagnostics and would now take the faulty equipment back to Holland and have it repaired/replaced.

We strongly advise all our valuable client’s to always protect their expensive equipment with an Automatic Voltage Regular with Surge protector and Genuine APC Smart UPS available at NATC.