Happy Fourth of July, everybody!
A quick announcement before the festivities: the office will be closed on July 4, 2018. We’ll be back on Thursday.
Be safe and have fun.
God Bless America!
Sujana Shrestha, hailing from Nepal, is our Inventory Specialist and she joins us from a 7-year stint managing a convenience store. While the volumes are much different, most of the tasks are still the same.
Her greatest accomplishment in life is a work in progress as she raises her children to have successful futures. On the weekends, she spends time with the family that she’s proud of.
Tally your score with the phx21 Best Practices Scorecard. Click the image below to get the scorecard and instructions.
Submit your scorecard with your Site Supervisor’s signature and Win a Cookie Party for your LDAR site. No need to get 100% on the card. Integrity and Learning are the key achievements!
Charles Christiansen, one of LDARtools’ Lead Technicians, shares with us his top 3 learning practices when performing a site audit:
- (12) Fill H2 with the probe attached
- (13) Keep your phx21 running while on break
- (19) Clean probe tip filters
Charles explains: “I have chosen these 3, but all 25 of the Scorecard items are just as important. Each practice plays its own part and helps keep the phx21s in the field as long as possible.”
To participate in the Cookie Party, have the Site Supervisor fill out the phx21 Best Practices Scorecard, sign and, date the bottom, then send it to sales@ldartools.com with the following:
- Your Name
- Physical Address
- Company Name
- How many phx21 friends will be joining the Cookie Party?
We are excited to announce that the 50th phx42 was shipped May 24th. This is only the beginning.
We will be the first to admit that manufacturing is hard. We have had learning opportunities (mistakes) on early units that made it to customers. We have worked hard to determine the cause of these issue
s and have successfully identified and addressed the cause of each one. There will be more to learn and we are ready.
There have also been many versions of our software and 3rd party handheld software that needed testing and revisions. The Inspection Logic, Guidewire, and CNTRAL Platform development teams have been great to work with and are committed to building the best customer experience for our mutual customers.
Being an early adopter can be a difficult thing and we thank every one of our phx42 customers for their willingness to help us improve the product, our software and the 3rd party software compatible with phx42.
If you are interested in a phx42 quote, please send an email to sales@ldartools today.
Below is a list of platforms the phx42 is compatible and being used with.
- LeakDAS Mobile 7.8.12.0 for Window Mobile
- LeakDAS Mobile Android
- LTIM2 for Windows Mobile
- Freedom for Android
- Guideware Mobile for Android
- Calibration: Cal5.0
Happy Memorial Weekend, everybody!A quick announcement before the festivities: the office will be closed on May 28, 2018. We’ll be back on Tuesday.
Be safe and have fun.
God Bless America!
How a 5-Minute Quick Solution will keep your phx21™ in the field longer
LDARtools’ highly trained technicians work on hundreds of phx21 analyzers in the course of a year. This is what the professionals had to say about maintaining your ph21.
So, while there are no perfect scenarios, we believe we can help you improve your LDAR program with some quick simple tips.
Let’s start with the good news; over one third, thirty-eight percent (38%), of all phx21s sent in for repairs were due to normal wear and tear. In other words, the Technicians in the field are doing everything correctly, however, in these cases, the repairs were above Level 1 Training. The pie chart below illustrates the data collected from our quarterly report.
The #1 most important thing you can do to prolong the use of your phx21
A third of the phx21s that visited our shop this quarter were due to filter and O-ring abuse. Performing a quick visual inspection of probe O-rings and inlet filters before going in the field will keep your phx21s in the field longer!
Tech Tip: O-rings (LDAR #918) and Inlet Filter (LDAR #825) can be easily misplaced or damaged. Keep plenty around. The phx21™ User Manual (Version 12.3, pg. 11)
Perform visual inspections of probe O-rings and inlet filters before going in the field.
Secondly, properly applying silicone grease (LDAR #881) to probe O-rings on a weekly basis will prevent cracking.
Trust your handheld when it tells you to replace probe filter, the phx21 PDA app will automatically display warning signs if the filter needs attention.
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Don’t forget to perform these quick 5-minute inspections of your filters and O-rings and keep your phx21 in the field longer!
Congratulations to everyone that maintains their phx21 in tip-top shape!
We are happy to announce our 7th Brownie Celebration! On April 18, 2018, our experienced Repair Technicians cleared the phx21 Maintenance Board. With the help of Level 1 Certified Technicians in the field and fast turnarounds, we are able to keep all 1,000 plus phx21s out of the shop and available for monitoring.
Previous phx21 Brownie Celebrations:
- May 20, 2015
- February 19, 2016
- August 30, 2016
- January 20, 2017
- August 7 & 8, 2017
- February 5 & 6, 2018
We hope you’ll be a part of this one! Just click the link below to RSVP:
Brownie RSVP CLICK HERE
You can also email: brownie@ldartools.com. Make sure you include “100% phx21 Celebration RSVP” in the subject line and the following in the email body:
- Your Name
- Physical Address
- Company Name
- How many phx21 friends will be joining you?
The link is active until Monday, May 14, 2018.
Thank you all for being the best part of our Brownie Celebration. As you know, we started this tradition back in May 2015 when Rex had the idea of rewarding technicians for helping us clear our phx21 Maintenance Board. We have celebrated many Brownie Celebrations due to our experienced Level 1 Certified Repair Techs, enhanced automated support system, and improved technician training methods. When a Brownie Celebration is announced we take a head count of technicians at phx21 sites and celebrate with you by mailing out brownies!
Over the years we have shipped out over 10,000 brownies to hundreds of customers and had lots of fun doing it! Nothing makes us happier than to see our customers enjoying the brownies! So a special thank you to Wayland and his team at Arkema-Clear Lake for sharing their picture with us!
Keep a lookout for the next Brownie Celebration and don’t forget to share, your picture with us!
Our first run of boards at the mainboard production facility uncovered a minor problem with the Analog-To-Digital converter (which allows us to measure FID readings). This sensor is so sensitive (to read low concentrations) that the standard production and subsequent cleaning process is not sufficient. The sensor was measuring microscopic flux residue from the board’s production. This was not initially detected on the first batch of 20 final production boards that had been assembled.
Our working assumption is that the first batches were cleaned by the engineers who designed the boards, while the latter batch was cleaned as a part of the production process. The difference in result, when reflected in electrical currents measured in pico amps, proved troublesome.
The problem manifested on approximately 50% of the units. Unfortunately, the boards must go through a time-consuming assembly, testing, and potting process, then installed in an actual phx42 before the issue can be discovered.
We have modified this part of the process to address the issue and expect the second batch of updated boards to go into phx42s on 4/12.
Assuming that we have effectively resolved this issue and we achieve a 100% success rate on that batch, we will return to our accelerated production schedule of 20 – 25 phx42s every two weeks.
We have currently delivered and placed into service 4 units in the US and a unit in Taiwan. All deployed units are performing according to expectations.
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Please note: your site delivery schedule is dependent on the completion of the Pre-Delivery Checklist, software availability, and installation schedule. Please contact sales@ldartools.com with any questions.
Christian Perdomo, our Business Development Manager, has an affinity to help people and listen to their stories. After 9/11 Christian joined the US Navy and became the first enlisted member in his family, today his two nephews are enlisted in the Army and the Marines. With a longing for camaraderie, Christian felt drawn to the family atmosphere at LDARtools. Acquiring his Master’s degree in Finance from the University of St. Thomas, Christian is ready to make a positive impact to our LDARtools family, friends, and clients.
As a husband and father of two, Christian enjoys spending his time with his family crafting, traveling, and working on his 1972 VW Camper Bus.
Quality & Information Security
