Just this past week, a customer called about a problem with one of our lubrication systems on a natural gas compressor. This compressor had barely run in the past few years and no recent maintenance had been performed. When reliability problems occur in a situation like this, troubleshooting can be complex, because there could be more than one issue. Despite this call coming on a Sunday, the customer got a quick response and our team immediately got to work. After spending a few hours troubleshooting with the customer, it was determined that boots on the ground were needed to solve the problem onsite.

Our team went straight to our home base in Freeport, Pennsylvania and prepared to arrive at the customer location first thing Monday morning. Once onsite, they immediately began going through a hands-on troubleshooting checklist and, after performing a detailed evaluation and fixing some minor maintenance related items, had the system running flawlessly. The team remained on location for several hours to make sure the situation was stable and then made the long drive back home. The next day we received another call from the customer reporting that the unit was down again. It is always possible to miss something, so our team loaded up and went back to the customer site. At this point, careful observation was needed to determine what had been missed.

After hours of close monitoring, the team caught it — an intermittent voltage drop on the supplied power coming into the controls for the lubrication system was triggering a fail-safe shutdown. This sort of thing – we like to call them “electrical gremlins” - can be extremely difficult to diagnose because they are intermittent and require specialized knowledge to identify. Our team’s dedication and perseverance helped this customer solve the problem and get the compressor back up and running.

Another recent example occurred a little over a month ago. A customer with an older system on a hydrogen compressor called because of shutdowns due to a no-flow situation. In this case, the lubrication system fail-safe performed flawlessly, shutting down the equipment before damage or dangerous over-pressure could be reached. After several hours, our support team was able to help the customer remotely diagnose a blocked supply line and walk them through the proper steps to get the unit back up and running. During the evaluation, the customer realized that maintenance had been deferred overlong on this unit and several wear components were well beyond their lifespan. He requested that we come to fully rehabilitate the system and make sure he did not have any more shutdowns on this critical application. Our crew was onsite within 24 hours to perform a full lube system overhaul and work with the facility staff to train them on the necessary preventative maintenance procedures needed to avoid future no-flow shutdown issues. Since our visit, our customer has had no further problems or shutdowns.

Our team went straight to our home base in Freeport, Pennsylvania and prepared to arrive at the customer location first thing Monday morning. Once onsite, they immediately began going through a hands-on troubleshooting checklist and, after performing a detailed evaluation and fixing some minor maintenance related items, had the system running flawlessly. The team remained on location for several hours to make sure the situation was stable and then made the long drive back home. The next day we received another call from the customer reporting that the unit was down again. It is always possible to miss something, so our team loaded up and went back to the customer site. At this point, careful observation was needed to determine what had been missed.

After hours of close monitoring, the team caught it — an intermittent voltage drop on the supplied power coming into the controls for the lubrication system was triggering a fail-safe shutdown. This sort of thing – we like to call them “electrical gremlins” - can be extremely difficult to diagnose because they are intermittent and require specialized knowledge to identify. Our team’s dedication and perseverance helped this customer solve the problem and get the compressor back up and running.

A cement company recently called about a monitoring failure on a lubrication system on a cement transport compressor. Our service team created a ticket and immediately started troubleshooting to solve the problem. The cement company is known to have good maintenance procedures and no mechanical issues were identified. The problem was isolated to the lubrication system monitoring device, and with a few simple steps, our team was able to help the customer fix the problem remotely. While many requests for support require an onsite visit, we have many more every year that our team is able to solve remotely. In several cases, customers do not even need to replace parts, they just need a little help to identify the issue, understand how to make adjustments, or how to perform system maintenance.

In fact, over the past two years, we have logged more than 200 support tickets to solve our customers’ problems. Tickets only get logged if they require a callback – meaning this number does not include customers who call and receive quick answers to simple problems from our team, which happens multiple times a day. This is just part of what our commitment to provide expert service and support means to our teams and our customers.