Tools and field guides that earn their keep
Working material from the plant floor — interactive estimators, diagnostic field guides, walk-down checklists and training primers. Written by an engineer, not a marketing team. All of it free.
Run the numbers yourself
Each tool shows all its math and nothing leaves your browser. No signup.
Crushing Plant Throughput & Utilization Estimator
Put in your nameplate, your average throughput while crushing and your hours, and see whether a crushing circuit is losing its shift to downtime or to slow running. All the math is shown; nothing leaves the browser.
Open the tool →Compressed Air Cost & Leak Estimator
Put in your compressor size, load, run hours and power rate, and see what your plant air actually costs — and how much of it is leaking away. Every formula is shown; nothing leaves the browser.
Open the tool →OEE & Downtime Cost Estimator
Put in your planned hours, downtime, ideal rate and output, and see availability, performance and OEE — plus what the losses cost you in a year. Every formula is shown; nothing leaves the browser.
Open the tool →24 printable guides, one link
Every guide below has its own page describing what's inside. Prefer the printable PDFs for the workshop wall or the van? Enter your details once and the whole library arrives as a single email link — no drip campaign, no spam.
When something is misbehaving
Symptom-first guides: what to look at, in what order, and what each finding means.
Chasing the Intermittent Fault
The fault that clears before anyone reaches the panel. How to capture evidence, sort the usual causes, and set a trap so the next occurrence tells you something.
Is It the Sensor or the Process?
A method for deciding whether a reading is lying or the process really is doing what the number says — cross-checks, signal integrity, grounding and drift.
Why Is the Crusher Tripping?
A decision guide for nuisance and protective trips on a crushing and screening circuit — telling a real trip from a nuisance one, and retuning without ever defeating protection.
Optical Sorter Faulting Mid-Shift
Why an optical sorter drops out a few times a shift, and the upstream causes crews miss — air-demand sag, feed presentation, window fouling. Watch the line, not the machine.
Chasing Faults in a Corrosive Plant
Composting and digester control faults driven by the environment — H2S, ammonia, moisture and dust — where they show up first and how to separate them from a real process problem.
Blower Won’t Hit Airflow Setpoint
Why an aeration or gas-mixing blower falls short of setpoint — backpressure and media, worn clearances, drifted flow sensing, or a control loop fighting itself — and how to tell which without over-tuning a slow biological process.
The VFD Keeps Tripping
Reading the fault code and working it the right way — overcurrent, overvoltage, ground fault, overtemp, overload, comms — before anyone reaches for the trip setting. What each fault really means and how to confirm it.
Conveyor Belt Drift and Nuisance Trips
Belt mistracking and the protection devices that pull the interlock and get blamed — drift switches, pull-cords, slip and plugged-chute detection — with the honest fixes versus the wrong one of widening the switch.
When the Plant Network Drops
Comms faults on the floor — EtherNet/IP, Modbus, PROFINET, DeviceNet. Physical layer, VFD noise and grounding, switch and duplex faults, and reading the port counters and module fault bits before you swap hardware.
Losing Screen Efficiency: Blinding & Pegging
Why a vibrating or disc screen loses efficiency — blinding, pegging and carryover — sorted by feed, media, machine motion and disc wear, with how to measure it and where the honest fix is mechanical.
A Bin Level You Can’t Trust
Radar and ultrasonic false readings in silos and hoppers — buildup, dust attenuation, false echoes, angle of repose — how to tell them apart and when to change technology. All diagnosed from the ground, never from inside the bin.
Walk-downs that catch it early
One-page checklists for a deliberate walk of the plant — before the fault forces one.
Crushing & Screening Controls — walk-around checklist
A one-page walk-around that separates utilization losses from real capacity limits: feed control, choke/level loops, belt-scale honesty, trip settings and the stops that quietly eat your shift.
MRF Controls — walk-down checklist
A one-page walk-down for a material recovery facility: start/stop sequencing, interlocks, compressed-air floor and manifold pressure, encoder registration, and the multi-vendor seams.
Composting & Digester Controls — health check
A one-page health check for composting and anaerobic digestion controls, built for a harsh environment — gas safety first, then aeration, interlocks, and the corrosion that fools your instruments.
Controls Commissioning (FAT/SAT) Checklist
A working checklist for factory and site acceptance: I/O checkout, loop calibration, interlock and permissive proving, sequencing, alarm test, and the power-loss/fail-safe check most schedules skip.
Alarm Rationalization Worksheet
A per-alarm worksheet built on EEMUA-191 / ISA-18.2 thinking: is it actionable, what’s the consequence, how much time to respond, priority, setpoint and deadband — plus a method for killing the nuisance repeaters first.
PLC Migration Planning Checklist
A planning checklist for replacing an obsolete PLC or HMI: risk assessment, capturing the old system before you touch it, I/O mapping, code approach, a written rollback plan, cutover, and proving every interlock after.
Panel & Enclosure Hardening Checklist
A hardening checklist for corrosive, dusty and washdown plants: enclosure rating, sealing, condensation and breathing control, corrosion mitigation, thermal and grounding — keeping the panel alive in a harsh environment.
Bring the crew up to speed
First-principles primers written for maintenance techs, not programmers.
Reading a 4–20 mA Loop
The instrumentation fundamental everything else rests on: what a current loop is, the live zero and why it starts at 4 mA, how to measure it properly, NAMUR fault bands, and turning mA into engineering units — taught from first principles.
PLC Basics for Maintenance Techs
What a PLC actually does: the scan cycle, digital and analog I/O, how to read a ladder rung, and why forcing an I/O point is a powerful tool that must never be left in place. Written for techs, not programmers.
Reading Electrical & Control Drawings
P&IDs, schematics, wiring diagrams and loop sheets — instrument tags, wire numbering, cross-references, and tracing one circuit end to end across the drawing set. The skill every tech needs and few are taught.
VFD Fundamentals: How a Drive Runs a Motor
What a variable frequency drive does and why plants use one: volts-per-hertz, the rectifier/DC-bus/inverter chain, the parameters that matter, and the stored-energy hazard behind the cover. Pairs with the VFD trip diagnostic.
PID Loops Without the Math
What P, I and D actually do, in plain terms — and what too much or too little of each looks like on a trend, so a tech can recognize a badly-tuned loop without touching an equation.
Alarms & Interlocks: What They’re For
The vocabulary made clear — alarm, permissive, interlock, trip, safety system — and the line between retuning a genuine nuisance and defeating a protective function, taught with a real example instead of a lecture.
Reading about a problem you actually have?
Skip the guide and describe the fault. The first conversation is free, and you'll get a straight assessment either way.
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