Course Overview

Delivery Options:

• Public Hands-On Training 
• Onsite Training

Length: 4-days

Percent Hands-on: 75%

Summary Description: This course starts at the basics to help students make sense of basic electricity and electrical concepts, including typical electrical circuits, schematics, prints, and diagrams, and then proceeds into electrical troubleshooting to improve logic, efficiency, and effectiveness of troubleshooting efforts in the field. 

Detailed Description

Students will first learn and solidify the concepts critical to basic electricity. They will establish a strong working understanding of Ohm's Law, series and parallel circuits, proper electrical testing and measurements, and familiarity with common components. 

The first part of this course utilizes a wide range of modular electrical components with simple connectors to allow quick and easy construction of numerous electrical circuits. Students build several basic electrical circuits directly on the classroom tables and then test and observe responses to various changes in order to conceptualize and form a working understanding of the important concepts.  

Once students are solid on basic electricity, they move into the fun and challenging Electrical Troubleshooting portion of the course where they will practice troubleshooting realistic electrical faults. 

The hands-on exercises in this course have been strategically refined over decades to help students correlate schematics, diagrams, and prints to the real-world systems, and teach technicians to properly use appropriate references and resources instead of leaning on tug-tracing wiring, part-swapping, or other poor practices.

Rather than simply focusing on whether the students 'find the fault or not', this course emphasizes the process and the logic students used to find the fault. This course strives to 'unteach' the practices of 'easter-egging' or 'guessing' (i.e. poking around with fingers crossed). 

After each troubleshooting scenario, we will discuss what could have been done more logically or more efficiently in the troubleshooting process and will talk about the root cause failure analysis (RCFA), and the repair & retest procedures. Many I&E technicians fail to fully perform these steps as an integral part of their troubleshooting efforts and the results are; repeated failures, added problems, cost of swapped parts, damage to swap-tested parts that are placed back in the warehouse to cause future problems, damage to other systems, repeated and excessive downtime, personnel or process safety issues, and many other expensive or unsafe situations. 

This training will develop and improve the logic, efficiency, and accuracy of electrical troubleshooting for maintenance techs and others involved with electrical maintenance or troubleshooting. Even Electrical Engineers and Certified Master Electricians who attend this course consistently praise the value of this course in improving troubleshooting skills.  

Course Outcomes:

• Be able to relate physical circuits to wiring diagrams and electrical schematics.
• Intuitively visualize the relationships of current, voltage, and resistance in a circuit (rather than memorizing formulas) via hands-on exercises and demonstrations. 
• Understand the relationships of power, energy and wattage in practical ways via hands-on exercises and demonstrations. 
• Be able to utilize the concepts associated with Ohm’s Law to solve typical problems in electrical circuits. 
• Understand how current and voltages behave in series, parallel, and combination series + parallel circuits.  
• Be able to utilize a digital multimeter to properly measure voltage, current, and resistance. 
• Be aware of tips and tricks, and common mistakes when using digital multimeters in electrical troubleshooting and maintenance. 
• Understand and be able to read and interpret basic electrical schematics, one-line diagrams, and wiring diagrams. 
• Gain familiarity with common electrical components.
• Gain practice testing, analyzing, and troubleshooting common simple electrical components such as resistors, potentiometers, rheostats, disconnects, fuses, circuit breakers.
• Learn to test and analyze the operation of key electrical operational components such as switches, indicators, solenoids, relays, motors, capacitors, inductors & inductive loads, etc..
• Understand the basics electrical safety.  
• Understand and be able to read and interpret electrical ‘ladder' diagrams to include understanding wire numbers, terminal numbers, component tags, etc. 
• Relate electrical ladder diagrams to typical wiring diagrams, schematics, and other prints. 
• Know how to methodically build (and/or trace or interpret a circuit) from a wiring diagram and/or ladder diagram or schematic.
• Understand the difference between electrical ladder diagrams, schematics, and wiring diagrams and know when and where to use each. 
• Learn to read and interpret an electrical diagram to predict system operation, voltage, and current readings at key points. 
• Learn to use advanced features of digital multimeters to advance troubleshooting capabilities (Diode check, min/max/avg, continuity test, etc.)
• Learn how to properly test and troubleshoot common components including various types of switches, indicators, relays, timers, diodes, capacitors, and others in a safe manner.
• Learn to troubleshoot typical motor starter (contactors and overloads).
• Learn to utilize troubleshooting tricks and tips such as half-splitting, negative tie-down & voltage tracing vs voltage drops, comparison checks to working circuits or branches, avoiding parallel circuit errors, etc. 
• Learn to utilize a systematic logical troubleshooting methodology. 
• Learn to keep track of symptoms, measurements, tests, and outcomes when troubleshooting. 
• Learn how and why to find the root cause of failure for all equipment failures.
• Learn to determine necessary retest requirements for various equipment, systems, and components pertaining to safety, operations, efficiency, regulatory requirements, etc.  

Hands-on Exercises: 

• Construct numerous circuits using our modular quick-connect components such as (switches, resistors, potentiometers, float switches, batteries, power supplies, lamps, relays, fuses, circuit breakers, motors, generators, diodes, LED's, capacitors, etc.).
• Students will predict and then observe the operation of each circuit and solve various problems assigned by instructor.
• Typically, students will be quizzed to guess what will happen prior to manipulating the circuit. This is to help 'open the box' in their minds. Then we make the change and answer the natural questions that arise. This approach best matches how people truly learn technical concepts and has proven tremendously successful at developing real understanding and long-lasting skills that can be built upon and expanded. This is one of many things that cause our training to deliver superior 'long-term' results. 
• As the course progresses, students will build upon the knowledge and experience they are gaining. 
• Students build a series of increasingly complex circuits on our Electrical Training Stations per provided electrical prints, schematics, ladder diagrams and/or wiring diagrams. The circuits constructed will include various types of switches, circuit protection, indicators, pneumatic solenoids, potentiometers, speed controls, SPST relays, DPDT & reversing relays, timing relays, motors, pumps, pressure switches, cam/limit switches, motor contactors & overloads, etc. etc..
• Students learn to troubleshoot typical electrical faults in increasingly complex faults using a logical, methodical approach. 
• As part of the overall repair process, students will determine and perform appropriate retest procedures and identify the RCF (Root Cause of Failure) for the applicable fault. 

Each student attending will be given a certificate of completion upon completing the course. 

The Basic Electricity & Electrical Troubleshooting Course is one of our most popular and effective offerings. Managers consistently tell us it provides a very positive impact and ROI. Students greatly enjoy this course and give it consistent high marks in all categories.