FAQ - Etheridge Plug-In Automation™
Most Frequent Questions and Answers
We are very confident in our product and process, however we are very careful to only quote systems where we can guarantee at least a 10% production increase. There are some plants that have mechanical bottlenecks that automation can’t alleviate, in these instances, we inform the customer that we cannot provide a quote until the mechanical conditions are changed.
We get this question a lot, you may be surprised to learn that not only are most of our jobs retrofit, but we actually prefer them. Many times the more difficult a plant is to run manually, the greater the benefits of a well calibrated automation system. Another nice benefit with a retrofit project is it is much easier to measure the tonnage gains thanks to our automation system.
Our goal with every project is simple: zero downtime due to our install. We work around our customers’ run schedule and take advantage of scheduled maintenance days to help us towards this goal. Sometimes downtime is necessary for testing, but we work with our customers to keep it as minimal as possible.
Belt slip at aggregate plants is a real issue, as traditional electrical interlocking doesn’t catch when the motor is on but the belt isn’t moving. The industry standard solution is a mechanical speed wheel, which has it’s own set of issues with reliability. Back in 1998, we invented a way to detect belt slip with no moving parts and nothing on the belt by monitoring the behavior of the electrical motor. We have successfully calibrated thousands of our Software Speed Switches over the past twenty years.
Training is included with all of our automation systems.
Absolutely, we offer remote and phone access as an option for all our systems.