1-of-a-kind meter saves costs for loco facility

11 August 2004 News Infrastructure

Transwerk's Chopper Repair & Maintenance division recently acquired a Fluke PM6303A LCR combination test unit - saving its customers hundreds of thousands of rand in downtime on their loco units, says local Fluke distributor, Spescom MeasureGraph.

Transwerk, a division of Transnet, is one of South Africa's leading Transport Equipment manufacturers and refurbishers of rolling stock and locomotive units for its main client, Spoornet. The Chopper repair and maintenance facility is one-of-a-kind in Africa, and is one of only three worldwide - the other two being located in Japan and Germany.

The main task of the facility is to repair the Class 14E locomotive main and auxiliary converters. Should the unit experience loss of power through faults, the usual chain of events is that the loco is sent to Bellville in the Western Cape for repair work. The faulty converter is then removed and sent to Pretoria. Prior to the facility acquiring the Fluke PM6303A, the entire converter had to be removed from the unit, without definite proof that it was faulty. There was no easy way to test certain parts of the converter while still closed. This entailed removing the entire roof section of the loco to remove the converter. Typically, this meant that the loco was out of service for a minimum of 30 days - a loss of revenue calculated between R35 000 and R55 000 per day. With the acquisition of the Fluke PM6303A initial testing can now take place inside the loco, saving costs.

The facility chose the Fluke PM6303A specifically because it is a combination LCR meter. It is capable of testing all three elements of the pulse transformer - resistance, capacitance and inductance simultaneously. Martin Slabbert, Profit Centre manager at the facility, standardised on Fluke for one simple reason: "Other suppliers came in with very competitive prices on specified LCR meters that looked great on paper and when it came down to the actual testing the Fluke 6303A LCR unit was the only one to consistently deliver. The Fluke 6303A LCR unit has proved itself over and over again," he said.

He says the PM6303A is quick and simple to operate, on the manufacturing floor as a quality assurance tool or in the service lab for quick tests of a wide variety of components. Its simple operation and 0,25% basic accuracy makes the PM6303A equally at home in calibration labs, service maintenance workshops and educational training environments.

For more information contact Hilton Preston, Spescom MeasureGraph, 011 266 1753, [email protected]

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