What would you do ? Not the TV show!

I was called to check a 28 meter long automated production line with a punch press and a bending machine,
- circa 1980 or 1990's,
- brought from Germany in "working condition"
- told it costs 350K used
- has two places for automatically pulling the sheets, one for the punch, the other for the bending,
- has 2X2 big racks of electronics
- enormous amount of hydraulic and pneumatics and everything that goes with that, no air compressor,
-- of the above, at least 300 hydraulic valves and pistons and other moving parts, i would venture a guess at nearly 800 of them
-- just the bender has 150 of 2cm sections that move up and down independently to press on the material and the same amount of them laterally to hold the material while bending
-- at least 200 of pneumatic valves and cylinders and suction cups, more like 400 to 500 of them
- the seller had to come and put it together and make it ready for use, but due to this f@#$% pandemics they can not come,


Went and had a look at it for nearly 2 hours, this is the result:
- machine in pretty good condition,
- plenty of yanked cables and wires, most of them not labelled,
- a huge number of disconnected connectors, not labelled,
- a huge number of detached sensors, wiring connected,
- a huge number of sensors on several pots, no wiring, no labelling,
- 20 to 30 posts with several IR sensors each, disconnected, used as fence around the machine,
- several leaky hydraulic fittings,
- a lot of damage during transport, some bent some crimped and some cut off metal shielded cables,
- no documentation

The issues:
- if the seller finds out someone messed with the machine, warranty is void, that is normal,
- the client can not wait and wants the machine working,
- there are no spare parts for the machine, not online, not at the manufacturer,
- machine is made in Italy, so the wiring is "spaghetti" system, no labelling or numbering on wires or connectors or sockets or ...anything.

My issue:
If i take the job, the responsibility falls on me and that is all good, until there is something that needs changing (see above about replacement parts), at that point the machine is useless and i am left in a very, very bad position.
I do not care about the wiring and hydro/pneu stuff, i can figure and replace all that, most probably i can also fix over 50% of the electronics if needed, so in total i am left with less than 20% uncertainty, but that is the part with the PLC programming (at least 10 to 20 of them) and machine parameters that are most probably lost by now due to the batteries (several of them) being empty since the machine is sitting for over 8 months and good only knows when they were changed last. No documentation !!!

What would you do ?

Grotius wrote:

In this case, you can sell a high end solution to your customer.

That will never happen here, ever!
In this case it would cost over 100K just in parts to replace.
Leme go back and add some more info up there that i forgot.
Thank you,

Rod,
Very good idea, thank you. Will have to check how that goes, although from the state of the machine i doubt they are Germans. Germans are meticulous at packaging for shipping and label everything.

rodw wrote:

And yes, Grotius's idea of using ethercat with or without Linuxcnc might actually make sense even if it takes you out of your comfort zone!

I have no comfort zone as far as challenges go, the more complicated = the more i am in !
I said that will not happen because they took a loan to get that, adding another 100K to the bill will ruin them.

Mike_Eitel wrote:

Sorry, best to do RUN AWAY

Yup that is the best option.

Mike_Eitel wrote:

Yes, you can do it, but how many month. You are as i know alone.. Can your customer wait that long? And what with your todays customers, wich you will not be able to help in those times.
Mike

3 weeks if everything goes nicely working 14 to 16 hour days, at least 2 months normally, but i would have to quote 3 months as ordering anything now is a lengthy process.
And you are right, i will loose quite some business while i am there.
Thank you, much appreciated.