Found loose wire from 2904 miles away

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Found loose wire from 2904 miles away

This past week my customer was having issues with their spud winch #1 intermittently faulting out. We agreed to have conference call at 8am eastern time which was 5am California time. At this point, the drive was tripping out consistently which is what you want when troubleshooting. The large GE drive was indicating speed tracking error. This indicated a speed feedback problem. I had them try to run it while I monitored the drive speed feedback. There was no feedback at all even though the motor rotated several rotations before tripping out. I had my trusty electrician in New York measure the encoder supply voltage at the motor. He measured zero, not good. The encoder cable back to the drive is not a straight shot. The AC drive is actually shared between two motors, spud winch and an anchor winch motor. The feedback gets switched by a relay. I suspected the relay was bad, but it was okay. While on the phone talking to the electrician in New York I had him look for loose wires and he indeed found one. He tightened it up and the cranes spud winch was back in business.