Category: News

On January 14th, 2016, in a ceremony in Charleston, West Virginia, Ray Mabus, Secretary of the Navy, announced that the newest expeditionary sea base (ESB) ship T-ESB 4 would be named the USNS Hershel “Woody” Williams.

Born in Fairmont, West Virginia, Mr. Williams joined the U.S. Marine Corps following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Initially, he was turned away from the U.S. military because he was too short. However, he kept pushing and enlisted with the Marine Corps Reserve in Charleston, West Virginia. In the months that followed, he found himself as a member of the 21st Marines, 3d Marine Division in action against the Japanese forces on Iwo Jima.

On February 23rd, 1945, Corporal Williams was quick to volunteer his services when U.S. tanks were maneuvering to open a lane for the infantry through the network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, buried mines and black volcanic sands. He daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machine gun fire from the unyielding positions. Covered only by four riflemen, he fought desperately for four hours under terrific enemy small-arms fire and repeatedly returned to his own lines to prepare demolition charges and obtain serviced flamethrowers, struggling back, frequently to the rear of hostile emplacements, to wipe out one position after another. On one occasion, he daringly mounted a pillbox to insert the nozzle of his flamethrower through the air vent, killing the occupants and silencing the gun. On another, he grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets and destroyed them with a burst of flame from his weapon. His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by is regiment and aided vitally in enabling his company to reach its objective. Corporal Williams’ aggressive fighting spirit and valiant devotion throughout this fiercely contested action sustained and enhanced the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

On October 5th, 1945, President Harry S. Truman presented the Medal of Honor to Corporal Williams. The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States.

Today, Mr. Williams is a very vibrant and robust 92 year-old living in Ona, West Virginia. He continues to stay actively involved and his current project is to lead the charge to have a memorial to Gold Star Families – those families who have lost sons and daughters in service to their country – in every state.

FCX Systems congratulates and honors West Virginia’s own Hershel “Woody’ Williams for being the hero he was on Iwo Jima in 1945 and for the continuing to give of himself to others every day of the week.

 

THANK YOU MR. HERSHEL “WOODY” WILLIAMS – you have made every West Virginian and American proud.

Jeff Jessen
Production Assembly / Wiring

If you come across Jeff on the production floor he is always hard at work. If you say hi to him he will acknowledge you with a pleasant greeting but that this usually the end of the conversation for he must return to his work. Jeff is about efficiency and is very meticulous about his work. He is typically in a good mood as long as he has his parts to work with. If he doesn’t have his parts then he gets a little cranky.

Jeff has become the FCX assembly and wiring expert. His work is impeccable because he has so much pride in his work . He knows that his name and FCX’s name goes on every product that he builds. In addition to his excellent work at FCX , he is also quite talented with dry walling, painting, and plumbing among other things ; just in case if you have a need for these services outside of FCX.

With the most recent Navy production run, just like all of the Navy production runs before it, Jeff, although he had plenty of help, was our MVP . He did the final assembly on nearly every unit and very well I might add. In fact, there was a friendly competition going on between himself and testing to see who could keep pace the best. In the end, FCX benefited the most with a high quality product produced on time and actually ahead of schedule.

FCX is fortunate to have Jeff as one of the faces of this company. Please congratulate Jeff Jessen as our first FCX Employee of the Month for 2016.

Stefanie McMillen
Finance

From the time that Stefanie steps foot into our building until it’s time to leave, one descriptive constant for her is –BUSY! You can tell this just from looking at her desk. From receiving daily phone calls from persistent vendors, receiving and entering stacks of invoices, dealing with credit card issues, issuing/mailing payments, and always stepping up to the plate to do those “special” duties as assigned—she continues to remain calm, pleasant and gets the job done.

Being in Accounts Payable, Stefanie is on the front line of dealing with vendor inquiries by phone, email, and in person which has been quite a challenge over the last several months. As stressful as this can be, she manages to be patient, polite, and helpful.

To elaborate on the “special” duties as assigned, Stefanie is the go to individual when something special needs to be done–from designing/making decorations for the holiday tree, creating flyers, planning and organizing events—she is always willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. Stefanie is an extremely artistic, creative and talented individual.

Stefanie is dedicated, hard-working, helpful, cooperative, and kind. FCX is fortunate and thankful to have Stefanie as an employee.

FCX Systems, in partnership with Ameribridge, is proud to receive the award for installation of combination 90 kva solid state 400 hertz frequency converters with 28 volt dc in combination on a total of thirteen passenger boarding gates located at Port of Columbus International Airport, Ohio. FCX Systems was selected for the new FCXtreme Combo 400Hz/28vdc converter technology and historical reliability and excellent performance.

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Wendy Ross
Inventory

Hard-working. Unassuming. Quiet. Kind. Helpful. Cooperative. Meticulous.

All of these words and more describe our November Employee of the Month – Wendy Ross.

From the time Wendy comes in our door every morning until she goes out our door every evening, Wendy never stops working – just like that EverReady battery bunny. That shouldn’t be all that surprising though, since she starts every morning before the break of dawn at home on the farm tending to her horses and wolf dogs and then repeats those same chores before calling it a day.

In her daily job responsibilities here at FCX, she makes sure that our materials and parts are received, counted and distributed accurately so that the production process can begin and move along as smooth as possible. She is our MVP leadoff hitter to get the production ball rolling for every job.

And, for every day of the past 16 years she has been with FCX, Wendy has the same smile on her face and great attitude for everyone she comes in contact with.

Last, but not least, when we are all millionaires from hitting either PowerBall or MegaMillions, we will have Wendy to thank for making sure we had the winning ticket!

Thanks, Wendy – you make a positive difference for FCX every day of the week.

Virgil Pase
Customer Service

virgilIf you have ever had a need for information on an FCX product whether it be for technical information, installation, troubleshooting, parts, service, warranty coverage, or just today’s temperature, you have spoken with Virgil.

If you never needed any of these things, you may not know Virgil.

Virgil has been with FCX for 16 years this month. He has progressed rapidly through the ranks from Production through Testing & Field Service to his current position in Customer Service. In this position, Virgil is one of the employees that interface directly with customers as a representative of FCX.

In all situations, from easy questions to the most irate and unreasonable customer, Virgil keeps his cool and resolves the problem. His smile and laugh is a beacon to everyone in the plant. You might wonder how he can take the heat. He is also a reigning Chili cook off champion.

Virgil has probably represented FCX in a positive way to more people than anyone else here. As if that were not enough he is also the primary producer of the 125 page Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) that accompanies each of the “Beasts” destined for a Lockheed Martin assembly line for the JSF F-35 fighter aircraft. This task alone requires one to two weeks of effort while maintaining the rest of his work load.

Virgil has a knack for diagnosing problems and guiding maintenance personnel to the source of a problem while explaining things in a manner that is easily understood.

We are fortunate to have Virgil as one of the faces of FCX and a very logical and slam-dunk choice for the Inaugural FCX Employee of the Month.

Every once in a while, something goes wrong. Many things, like a flat tire, are easy to diagnose. “Sounded like BANG Whomp, Whomp, Whomp. Looks like a flat tire, must be a flat tire. “

Other things are more complex. Let’s stick with tires for the moment. Newer vehicles come with pressure sensors in the tires. At some point, a low-pressure level triggers an alarm. A light on our console indicates the alarm. Fancier cars even tell you which wheel. The problem is, when you rotate the tires it now shows the wrong tire unless it was re-calibrated. Another problem is these sensors are battery powered inside each wheel (including the spare). When the battery fails, an alarm comes on even if the air pressure is good. Fortunately, although the indicator may be accurately indicating a flat tire, it will not prevent you from driving on it until the tire is un-repairable and the rim also has to be replaced. “No honey, I didn’t have a flat last night. But the car was driving funny and making a noise like “Whomp, Whomp, Whomp.”

This all goes to show that diagnostics can be correct some of the time, incorrect some of the time and inconclusive some of the time. Yes, they are a valuable tool and extremely helpful, but should not always be blindly followed. The user needs to know the equipment and possess common sense at all times. Today we expect an internal diagnostic to trigger an alarm or text display, and then, not only explain what is wrong but also guide us through the repair or correction.

For example: “Open Door C, lift the Blue Lever marked C3, turn the Green Knob YY two turns to the left and remove the paper jam.”

What if the jam sensor is the broken part? Will the report get out by the end of business today?

I often see specifications defining the diagnostics and fault codes, which are written by someone whose job is writing.

They have never fixed or operated a machine in their life. The specification request may require a log of the previous 100 faults. I would hope there is a thought that just jumped out and said, “What do I care if the cause was for a fault 100 events back?” What is the last fault? Maybe the last five but be realistic when you ask for a feature. Another good one was a request for an indicator lamp to indicate loss of power! Yes, it can be done, but how about the obvious- if the lights are off, there is no power.

What happened to the folks who knew the equipment? There were craftsmen who could feel or hear if something was a little bit off and needed an adjustment before damage occurred. Those craftsmen are here with us in West Virginia.

We design fault codes to help the average user find a problem if one exists, but we also back up the automated diagnostic with real technicians and engineers in real time. Give us a call, we would love to talk and introduce you to equipment made as it should be made.

An old, retired machinist went back to his former place of work many years later to take a tour of the plant. The tour guide had each participant give a brief introduction and was delighted to learn the old man was a former employee. The guide took great pride in showing the new state-of-the-art computer-driven machines. Part of the description was the amazing tolerance they were able to achieve.

“This machine is accurate to a tolerance of one, one-hundred-thousandth of an inch,” the guide stated proudly. “Bet you didn’t hold tolerances to that level back in your day?” he asked the old man.

“No,” said the old machinist, “we didn’t have those kind of tolerances. We just made parts that fit exactly.”

The world of electronics prior to the digital revolution was an analog world. Control and feedback voltages had an infinite number of values, and the system came into the desired setpoint exactly. Waveforms were smooth and variables were infinitely variable.

I’ll jump over the 4-bit digital beginnings and jump right in at 8 bits. Eight bits of binary looks like 01100011. The lowest value is 00000000 (0 decimal) and the highest is 11111111 (255 decimal); that’s 256 different values. It also looks like 256 steps. Each step is 1 / 256 away from the next.

For example if 11111111 (255) is 5 volts maximum and 00000000 (0) is 0 volts, then we have 0.01953125 volts per step. That can also be viewed as 0.390625% per step.

A setpoint can be 01111110, (126), 2.4609375 volts or 01111111, (127), 2.48046875 volts, but NOT 2.475 volts.

Everything becomes jittery. Yes, you can increase the bit count 16, 32, 64, etc., which reduces the error, but you still have to rely on alternating between a bit too low and a bit too high. Nothing fits exactly.

The good news is that the digital revolution brought computers and programming. Now, instead of making a machine that only does one thing, the programming can be modified to change the process without redesigning and building a new machine.

An update of software can eliminate old problems, add new algorithms and give new life to an old design. This is marvelous. It is like liquid electronics. No need to create a new circuit board, just change how it processes inputs and scales outputs.

Forget changing resistors to set the gain of amplifiers, program a new gain. Wow, this digital stuff is great! We can make the changes on a computer, plug in a cable and update the old design with a new one. What time we can save!

What did you say about jitter? I didn’t notice any jitter.

Last time, I presented an example of a simple 3-phase inverter. An analogy was made to a 3-cylinder engine. (One cylinder per phase)

Using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), each phase can appear to be more than the simple on/off which was shown in the timing chart.

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By switching on and off very quickly, a series of gradually increasing and decreasing pulses can be created per phase. This makes the output more sinusoidal.

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One limiting factor to consider from last time is that, “each switch carries the full-load amperage while it is on.”

Technically, there is a limit as to how large of a switching transistor is available from the manufacturers. One might think this limits the size of available inverters and frequency converters.

Think back to the 3-cylinder engine analogy. Imagine the limit on switching transistors to be a limit on cylinder size. How can we increase the engine size if the cylinders are as large as they can be? YES – add more cylinders.

At FCX Systems, on large inverters and converters, we shift out of the PWM mode and utilize the simple inverter model. By using 4 of the three phase inverters we create what works as a 12-cylinder engine. That creates more power and smoother output.

Power capability is 4 times that of a PWM single inverter. Shifting the timing of the inverters allows the creation of incremental steps in voltage. This is referred to as step wave modulation.

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There is also a belief that the voltage increments create less transients and stress on windings and cables. This may prolong the life of the unit, while also providing higher power capabilities.

Normal recommendations are for the PWM design in ratings of 180 KVA and below. Above that level, the step wave design is preferred and available up to 2 MVA.

Many times I’m asked to explain a technical statement to a person who is either non-technical or from a different branch of technology. One such question stemmed from a general comment regarding inverter sizing. The inverter is the group of switching devices that convert DC into AC.

In the next two figures, DC on the top and bottom rails can create current in two different directions by turning on or off different switches.

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Figure 1, Current left to right

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Figure 2, Current right to left

Depending how fast the switches are alternated, the current will alternate at the same frequency.

Each switch carries the full-load amperage while it is on. The 4 switches in the previous figures make up a single-phase inverter; adding 2 more switches make a 3-phase inverter.

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Think of this as a 3-cylinder engine. Each pair of switches connected to a phase alternates between top and bottom (+ and -).

The timing between cylinders (phases) is such that each one is 1/3 of a revolution (120°) after the next, Atop turns on, 120° later Btop and 120° later Ctop. See below.

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The actual timing is: Atop, Cbottom, Btop, Abottom, Ctop, Bbottom and back to Atop.

This is a very simple 3-phase inverter.

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