Shoutout to the guy who showed me our cutter head was running 20% slower than spec

I was swapping out a worn cutter head last week and this old timer from the yard walks up. He points at my RPM gauge and says I've been running 20% slower than spec for probably 6 months. He pulled out a manual from 2019 that had the exact numbers. I checked my logs and sure enough my production was down about 15 cubic yards per hour. Turns out a bad speed sensor was throwing off my readout the whole time. Anyone else ever run a machine with a bad sensor for way longer than they should have?

2 comments

2 Comments

sandra69328d ago

Man, that's a rough one to find out after 6 months, isn't it? I had a coolant temp sensor go bad on a loader once and it was reading 30 degrees low... I ran it that way for almost a whole season before a shop guy caught it during a routine check. By then I'd already cooked the head gasket a little and had to replace it way earlier than I should've. Makes you wonder how many little problems like that we just don't catch... you think you're fine but the numbers are lying to you the whole time.

dakotal1628d ago

The bad sensor getting thrown off by a bad speed sensor... man, that hits close to home. @sandra693 mentioned the coolant temp sensor issue, and I've seen that exact deal with a pressure transducer on a crusher that was off by 200 psi for months. One thing that's helped me is keeping a little logbook with the spec numbers taped to the inside of the machine's panel door. That way, when something feels off, I can pull it out and cross-check without trusting the gauge alone. It's a pain, but it's saved my bacon more than once.