Ugh today was another Monday (-.-// all the
Mondays). Anyways this Monday was not that bad. The morning brought forth some
good bread, strawberry smoothie thing, B&R, ham and cheese and eggs. It was
good. After we that we headed to the hospital and arrived around like 8:40 AM.
We started working on the castors and whatnot for the IV stand for the
emergency place (as we had painted it on Friday and now it was ready to finish
up the castors and put them on). We filed off the surface rust on the castors
and put some WD-40 in them and then put them back in. Meanwhile Dan tried
calling the director of the other hospital in Saballo (where we might go for a
few days to work on some equipment) without luck. Anyways we also met another
one of the maintenance guys (named Cesar or “Popo”). This dude is pretty chill
as is almost as tall as I am which is why I think the others sometimes call him
a giant. Anyways he just sort of chills around the workshop for a bit then
disappears on a project somewhere and usually ends up bringing us back some
equipment that is broken in some way (he brought us a fan and some syringe
pumps). The syringe pumps were annoying as of the 4 we had, only 1 worked and
even then it had a bad battery (a NiCd that among 6 cells only had 0.25V (O.o
dead beyond use)). The other pumps refused to turn on and showed no indication
of being fixed as the power supply seemed fine. The castors project wasn’t too
terribly hard as we did it decently quickly. After we got the castors back in
we took the IV stand back to the emergency area and put it back in the room
(and took another 6 wheeled squid-like base IV stand to the shop). We also started to take
inventory of the laboratory equipment (some microscopes, a shaker machine, a
spectrophotometer that’s busted but has a water bath in it that’s working and
some more water baths and another dead centrifuge).
Anyways we were
inventorying the water bath for the plasma and I noticed a bad shaving off of
the power cord (where something had taken off about an inch of the insulation
in chip form (and had also ruptured the insulation of one of the wires too)).
Anyways we were showing it to one of the techs and I managed to get another 110
V AC shock (second one this trip (as the wire missing the insulation conveniently
happened to be the “hot” wire (-.- futz that wire (-.-// all the unsafe power
cords)))). Shortly thereafter I decided to electrical tape the cord, but then
Dan thought we should just shorten the cord, so I grabbed the tools to do that
instead. We opened the side of the apparatus and removed the strain relief to
find that the three wires went to individual crimp connectors that were unique
(meaning we couldn’t just cut them off and recrimp them onto the new shortened
cable). Anyways the obvious solution was to shorten the power cord to accommodate
the chip removed from the cable (putting the part inside of the strain relief)
and stripping this area and using twist terminal caps to join the connectors
(with a bit more wire) to the new wires coming in from the wall outlet. This worked
quite well, but the machine didn’t turn on after we did this (after we put the
side panel back on), and we had to open the machine up again and put the panel
on again for it to work. Those tech were really lucky with that power cord (as
it was so bad that the hot wire was basically 50% exposed and could easily
shock someone (as it had done to me), but worse it could easily have contacted
the machine (electrifying the entire unit and perhaps cooking a lab tech too).
Even worse than all of that was the fact the metal case was sitting on rubber
feet sitting on a whole metal counter (as part of the sink nearby (where the
wire could have electrified the sink basin and then someone perhaps)). Glad we
fixed it though. BAM FIX!
After that we grabbed
the centrifuge and headed back to the shop. We took apart the centrifuge (which
was incredibly dirty on the rotor and the test tube holders) and eventually got
the rotor off after Marlon told us to invert the centrifuge several times and
it literally just fell off. The centrifuge had been somewhat operation in the
past (but had required a hand push to get the rotor turning before it would
work up to speed, but then this failed to get the motor turning anymore after
that). We looked at the motor and the connections looked fine, so we checked
the brushes and one happened to be like 19 mm long while the other was only
like 9 mm long, so new brushes time! Also time to clean the commutator. About
this time it was lunch, so we cleaned up a bit and headed off for lunch (we
needed contact cleaner from Barney, so this was a good stopping point for now).
Barney was also not at the hospital at all today, so we went to the pizza place
Alex had mentioned was good over on one of the side streets (I took a quick
detour to the Claro store to change some money and got the best exchange rate I’ve
gotten in all of Nicaragua at 24.75 Cordobas per dollar). Anyways we checked
for brushes at the local ferreteria, but the only brushes they stock are for
drills (and seem to be about 14 mm long). Dan also ran into Lee Lou and the
other girl from Holland (as they were just walking back from buying groceries)
and we chatted with them for a bit. I also talked to one of the dudes who works
in the emergency area who was telling me they really like the IV stand with the
new paint job. Lunch was half of this huge calzone (pepperoni and salami and
green olives (so tasty)) from the pizza place with two cokes to drink all of
this only cost 130 Cordobas (~$5).
After lunch Dan and I
returned to the shop to work on the centrifuge a tick more and to also work on
the castors and grinding of the other IV stand. Also during this time Popo
asked if we could fix this one huge motor for pumping water into the hospital.
The problem he said was with the motor becoming too hot to run after only a
short time and making them rely on the older motor that was not effective and
could only provide water to the hospital for the morning. Anyways he said the
newer pump was supposed to run on 220V and showed us the motor (which looked
like a standard irrigation pump basically (just like getting ready for handline
changing in the morning!)). Anyways the pump seemed fine on the exterior and I
asked if they had lubed the pump as it sounded like the pump could have extra
friction -> heat, but Popo said it was fine. We basically left after taking
a look at the small external transformer for the pump (which is open to the
elements and is kinda sketch as the 220V lines are just sitting on the ground
taped to the lines to the box (need to rewire this as a job)). Popo gave us the
instruction manuals for the pump and then we headed back to the shop (the
manuals were in Spanish, but one was a quick start guide with an English side.
I decided to just glance at the guide and see if there was anything I could see
(I had looked at the motor circuitry and it looked fine (there was a sticker on
the motor that said it was now wired for 220V)) that could be wrong. My eye
caught that there is a switch on the motor circuitry that changes the rating
from 110V to 220V and I decided to check on the motor what the switch was set
to (on the quick start guide, the switch was rumored to be factory set to 220V
(and showed the user turning a screwdriver to change settings if need be)).
Anyways my random hunch showed the voltage switch was set to the 110V setting!
BAM! Dunno if this is a fix or not yet because they wouldn’t try the pump in
the afternoon, but I have to wait until tomorrow morning (but I’m hopeful for
that time) (it took a wrench to move that switch too (darned quick start guide
giving me false hopes of using a screwdriver). Anyways that was about the excitement
of my day.
Also during this time
Popo brought us a fan that was not functioning. This fan looked basically brand
new from the exterior, but we tried it and sure enough it did not work. We took
it apart to find the induction motor inside and tried the power on the switches
(the fan is interesting in that the higher power settings are enabled by the
use of additional wire coils wrapped around the iron core (basically each
setting uses like 3 coils and then the higher settings just add the voltage to
the other coils). Anyways we checked the motor and it was indeed getting the
required 110V, but something wasn’t transferring the motor to actually turn.
Popo said it was because this one small capacitor tucked away under the wire
wrapping was busted (we measured 125 pF (0.125 nF)) but we’re not sure if that
is the case or not. I think the commutator might be well worn (as the diagonal
lines previously on the commutator are now missing), but then again I think the
motor is induction based, so this doesn’t really matter. Basically, the fan
just seems to be thoroughly dead. After the fan, Dan and I worked some more on
the new IV stand project (Dan grinding away as I worked on castors (with one
castor refusing to be unscrewed from the base (as the nut is über tight on
there)) and then packed up our tools to prepare for the end of the day (because
we thought we might be shipping out to Saballo tomorrow, but we met the doctor
about one the walk back and said he has to talk to his supervisors first and
get their approval (so Thursday might be our first day there). Anyways I made a
quick run to the bakery (which was actually open this time) and bought this
circular dessert pastry consisting of a dough base with a chewy apple/chocolate
covering on it for 15 Cord. After that much time was spent chilling and
decompressing from the day.
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