When staying at a rural, quality hotel in Nevada, you want to make sure it looks swanky from the outside.
Around 10 pm local time, I got woken up by one of the local lot lizards, offering her services. I ended up turning her down. As I was closing my door, I heard her yell down to the parking lot to someone "stay in the fucking car".
I imagine it was "take your kid to work" day for the local prostitutes.
Getting up early in the morning, I had to walk through the casino section of this shit hole to get to the front desk. As much as bossman Jack is a degenerate gambler, at least he isn't in the middle of fucking nowhere, feeding twenties into a slot machine.
Getting to the site, I spent the entire morning disassembling the VFD and attempting to remove about 40 lbs of dust, mud, and other shit. Eventually we got to the point of attempting not to die. I kicked all the employees out of the room and told them that if they hear a loud bang, wait fifteen minutes and then enter to get me to the hospital.
Donning my moon suit and then racking in the switchgear, I was pleasantly surprised not to be blown up. Walking over to the VFD, I said a quick prayer, and then pressed the button to perform startup to diode mode, hearing the main contactor close, the fans kick on, and then the precharge isolation reactor close. I cannot express the feeling of relief and joy that this $600k drive didn't immediately explode in front of me.
I then heard behind me, over the noise "hey! Good job. You fixed it!". I ripped off my helmet and realized one of the managers had walked into the room, after I kicked everyone out, to watch me work.
In my defense, you can't really see well in a moon suit and that is on purpose.
He was wearing a helmet and normal clothing. I did not handle it well, yelling and cussing for him to get the fuck out of the room.
At this point, the transformer has survived the 4160 entering it, but now I had to get the VFD to start controlling the rectifier action, where it would fire IGBT's and push reactive current back to the utility. This means I would be chopping the voltage at high frequency, in and out phase with the incoming voltage. So I was really not out of the woods at all yet. This was really going to stress it.
Reaching for the bright red interlock button, this time, I tried to scan the room first for idiots, while muttering the lord's prayer. All clear, I pressed the oh fuck button.
Holy shit it survived. I leave the room, the miners are waiting on the ground. "All good so far". One tried to go pass me. "No don't go in there. I need operations to start the crusher. The power cells need to energize the motor for us to be sure. And until then no one enters"
3 hours later, with me sweating like a pig in a moon suit, operations finally started the crusher..
I have no fucking idea how this transformer survived. Their one manager asked if it was fixed.
"Yes. But it could last 15 years or 15 minutes. We have no idea when it will fail, but for now, your entire system is ready for production"
I got a job offer on the spot for more than I currently make by about $40k. But there is literally nothing for miles. I would have an hour long drive, one way each day, to get to the nearest trailer park. Kind of no point making money when you got fuck all to spend it on.