Latest / The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast / Episode 336. Fast Track to Learning Electronic Valves & Controllers

Transcript

Episode 336. Fast Track to Learning Electronic Valves & Controllers · The Refrigeration Mentor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker: What's up everyone? Trevor Matthews from Refrigeration Mentor, and I want to dive into electronic valves, electronic controllers. I think this is super important. We're seeing more and more of these you gotta understand the controllers, when we, when I talk about this in our different training programs, supermarket programs or CO2 programs or whatever the program it is, the, the biggest thing is, is investing some of that time to learn that specific control.
• 0:01
  So if you start preparing yourself for these situation, it's gonna make your life easier. So this is why I want to dive into some case controllers because we're seeing more and more of them out there. They're not as difficult as as we make them, or. Even as I used to make them, it is getting into the manual.
• 0:02
  You can't remember it all either, but when you plan and prepare, you know that you have a, it's 'cause I do this, I have lots of people in. My, say, my intro to CO2 programs, like, yeah, we got a few stores, but I don't really get any calls. I haven't been there and I ask them, well, what case controllers? I don't know.
• 0:03
  And so what I kind of want to talk about is some of the things that I talk about in my intro to CO2 program when we're talking about controls and case controllers and some of the things. So some of the ones that I talk about and I see. Kind of the most is really the, the microthermal that those m mt seven hundreds we get, I, I get a lot of people talking about the x M six, seven eights, or six seven nines, depending on if it's a stepper or a pulse.
• 0:04
  You have at least have the model number. Write the model number in there. So Copeland XM 6 78 manual. Even if you go on Google. You're gonna find it on Google. So I use chat GBT now, like Google as well. I'm doing searches because I'm like, where's the source? How do I source? And when you go into Google, it's Gemini now, so you'll see the, the thing populating right away.
• 0:05
  Information and the latest documentation. That's step one. Okay, so finding the resources. So, so now you get whatever the manufacturer, if it's a Microthermal case controller that you're looking at, or if it's a Copeland or if it's a Danfoss, the things that you really need to understand is like some of the initial setup.
• 0:06
  It doesn't matter if they're making it easier for you, right? Because not all manufacturers like that. You need to understand those setpoint for. So one quick example. I've done a great multiple podcasts with my good friend. Kevin Mulis, great guy outta the uk. Super smart dude in CO2, and we did one on parameters and he had parameters checklist for both medium and low temp.
• 0:07
  What is that range? Is that the correct range? Pressure transducer? You gotta verify it's the right temperature probe. Just because the store was installed and surface doesn't mean the wrong temperature probe hasn't been there from day one. Maybe it was just getting by. Maybe that temperature probe is the termination one, and it terminated close to that, that temperature, but nobody really noticed.
• 0:08
  You can put it in there and just make sure you're not gonna do all 300, 500 in the store, but you're gonna test some of them when you need to, just to see the calibration on how accurately you are reading them. A lot of the times they'll have a, a skewed number. It could be in the thousands, you know, a temperature or the negative, so you know that that lawsuits.
• 0:09
  So on that historical data, what is the trends? How was the valve opening? What was the opening percentage? I have a great video that I did with my friend. Philip a mill. He used to work at an egg, but he shows us how to fine tune a Microthermal case controller. You know, you gotta check the base value.
• 0:10
  You may have to change, maybe you reduce it from opening it so much, so you don't want it to open to a hundred percent. Maybe you only want it to open to 80%, and when you do that, now the valve doesn't overshoot. So there's different parameters and different controllers to really look at this. And then you can even dive in if you have to in the more advanced stuff.
• 0:11
  'cause it's, it's really looking at past errors in that controller and in what the way that valve is moving. What it does, it helps predict future errors by really considering the rate change of the valve. And that's what you're looking at. And when you do some, some people do pi, I know Dan Foss and me and Chris Brown were hanging out, is on in, is in the, the podcast school check that podcast out is that we walk in through and they're, they do it, they're doing an even.
• 0:12
  So how, how do we do that? Maybe you might need to reduce the proportional gain or increase the integral time. And so if that system is slower risk. Bond, you might gently increase the proportional gain and reduce the integral time. Okay. So you want to do this slowly. You wanna watch it, it will react quite quickly.
• 0:13
  These values. Okay. And the big thing is, is just watching, watching the, how it reacts because I really believe the manufacturers do a great job at, at the default settings not having to play around with these. But there are definitely situations where you will have to go in certain scenarios where to find, tune it better.
• 0:14
  It might be a system related issue, which most times it is, which most times it is. I talked a little bit about fine tuning because specific controllers are gonna do it differently. Really you're gonna have to go into the manuals and look at those ones when you get into fine tuning the p and IDs and those controllers, but then you really want to go through some of your.
• 0:15
  To the controller or not if, if they go offline. You gotta understand, know how to do that process. Read and write to a controller. Depending on the controller manufacturer, like I know in the e twos and e threes, you can read to a controller and write to a controller. You gotta know how to do that stuff because if you mistakenly send a program out to a controller or.
• 0:16
  They're a hundred percent closed, a hundred percent open, a hundred percent closed. They're done on time. So they, I think the the base is six seconds, three seconds open, three seconds close. And I see technician, well, I change it to 10 seconds. I change it to eight seconds. I change it to 20 seconds. Why?
• 0:17
  So go in and understand that. Make sure everything's running. Why are you making this change? So if this was already started up, this was running for a year or two years and you didn't have really any service calls, everything's been running normally. Why are you changing? So that's why you go back to the history.
• 0:18
  It dives into how to set up the controller. But if you're not working on all the time or you're not working on it at all, you know you have no search. There's no point of diving in and reading that right away. That's after you learn the, the controllers that you are working on. Learn those controllers first, and then go into the the Carell ones or the RDM ones or whoever's, because honestly I've learned so much from reading the other manufacturers.
• 0:19
  Yes. Do you change, do you set it up a little bit differently? Yes. And do you walk through the controller? A little bit different, yes. But the, the fundamentals behind it, they all got, they have relays, they all have sensors. They all have kind of algorithms inside to really tell you what is happening. Like how does that controller actually work?
• 0:20
  Maybe watching movies, playing video games, playing golf. Whatever you're fishing even. I like, I like doing all those stuff as well, but I take some of my time and I invest in, in learning, learning my craft. And my craft now is training and education, CO2 natural refrigerants, public speaking professional development.
• 0:21
  Same thing with Microthermal or Corral or VER or whoever it is. There's so many manufacturers out there, it could be talking about a drive. The thing is, is that find out find, you can find this out from, from you're at the stores, first of all, but you can find yourself from service managers. You can find this out from project managers at your company and ask them these questions.
• 0:22
  And I think that the best way to do it is actually look, have a picture of the controller to go out to the case, take a picture of the wire, the controller as it's wired up, have the wiring diagram there with you, and then have the manual there with you that the, having those three things. And then read the first just one page a day.
• 0:23
  Yeah, because it doesn't matter what controller it is, you can figure it out. You, you work in refrigeration, you are working on su supermarket systems. You're working on the most complex systems that can be out there, right? From chillers to V-R-V-V-R-F HVAC systems. Lots of different things that I am talking about with different technicians.
• 0:24
  Or how I get into a trend graph. How do I look at it? How do I place which ones I wanna look at that help me the best? I did a podcast with Brett Cheshire, my good friend from Copeland, where we talk about the top graphs. He looks for check that went out, it's on E three, but, and the CC 200, but we talk about how he likes to layout his graphs when he is remotely troubleshooting.
• 0:25
  And even better if you, you include in that two and a half hours actually the field work. So that's 30 minutes a week on one of those controllers. And that could include taking a picture of the controller taking your meter out and just checking the voltage and the resistance, and using your amp clamp on there.
• 0:26
  'cause you can. ' cause most technicians today, and I see it, they even tell me. I just learned on the job, Trevor. I don't do any, any training. This is the first car training that I'm coming to outside all my, my company's putting it on. They, they ask me if I want to go. I keep saying I want training, and this is now, now I'm like, holy smokes.
• 0:27
  So go and check those ones out. I know a lot of the other manufacturers do trainings as well, so it doesn't, even if it's not refrigeration mentor training, it doesn't matter to me. I want you to invest in yourself so you're confident and you can do this, just like these case controllers. You can be the best at your company and case control.
• 0:28
  So when you're doing the maintenance, you do it in half the time of someone else. You do it in a, in a, in a pace that really takes you to the next level. And, and when your service manager looks at that and they're like, holy smokes, where did you come from? Like, how did you learn all this? How are you crushing it?
• 0:29
  And it's, it is putting the work in just like the expert, anybody that you look up to, anyone that's a say in movies or singers or business people or, or just people in general, like just life people that you look up and you see, they put thousands of hours in, thousands of hours into research, into practice, into doing it.
• 0:30
  How do you level up your career? How do you help others level up their career? As always, head to refrigeration mentor.com, check out our programs, check out what's going on there because there's always new resources, new events. Check out the new events page that we have. Looking forward to hearing from you.