electrical instrumentation info ??

conork92

Im looking for information on electrical instrumentation im looking at doing a year course in sligo online or blanchardstown or maybe fas . I am a qualified electrician

Which course is best to do ??

What is involved in instrumentation work ??

Whats it like to get work after finishing a course ??

Any other extra info would be great

Thanks

eurokev

Hey. I'm late in to doing an e&I apprenticeship at 29. I'm almost finished my first year. Before that I was doing something completely unrelated, however I have been doing a night course for the last 5 years in applied physics and instrumentation at the local IT.

In my course virtually everyone, about 30 ppl, was a qualified electrician looking to get in to instrumentation.

What I can tell you from my limited experience so far and from talking to electricians is that it is a much much easier workload. I personally have only ever touched cable tray once and conduit twice. Iv only pulled a cable about 10 times and only because there was pressure on the job.

I'm working in the maintainence dept. of a plant. We get in contractors to do most of the heavy work. Our days are spent calibrating instruments such as ph probes, flow meters, level transmitters ... etc and fault finding on the same when problems arise. Also doing a lot of isolations on mcc panels and disconnections, fault finding on PLCs, etc.. Also taking readings on a number of items of plant which relates to our environmental licence and has to be kept in spec.

A run down of my day today was, short briefing in the morning. Take environmental readings, 3 of 4 motor mcc panel isolations. secured a bit of unistrut that came loose, fixed an air con unit hose that fell off, investigated how to change the contrast of a display used by operators, fault finding on a valve that was showing as in a fault condition on the dcs(this job took most of day)

I don't know if that varies much from the day to day life of an electrician, but that's a typical day. Except for maybe if we were not stuck on one job for so long we would have calibrated something.

A decent understanding of physics is pretty essential in my opinion to understand the instruments and I would strongly advise on brushing on your maths if planning to do a course, you won't really use it in work but you would in class.

Hope this helps ya out

conork92

eurokev wrote: »

Hey. I'm late in to doing an e&I apprenticeship at 29. I'm almost finished my first year. Before that I was doing something completely unrelated, however I have been doing a night course for the last 5 years in applied physics and instrumentation at the local IT.

In my course virtually everyone, about 30 ppl, was a qualified electrician looking to get in to instrumentation.

What I can tell you from my limited experience so far and from talking to electricians is that it is a much much easier workload. I personally have only ever touched cable tray once and conduit twice. Iv only pulled a cable about 10 times and only because there was pressure on the job.

I'm working in the maintainence dept. of a plant. We get in contractors to do most of the heavy work. Our days are spent calibrating instruments such as ph probes, flow meters, level transmitters ... etc and fault finding on the same when problems arise. Also doing a lot of isolations on mcc panels and disconnections, fault finding on PLCs, etc.. Also taking readings on a number of items of plant which relates to our environmental licence and has to be kept in spec.

A run down of my day today was, short briefing in the morning. Take environmental readings, 3 of 4 motor mcc panel isolations. secured a bit of unistrut that came loose, fixed an air con unit hose that fell off, investigated how to change the contrast of a display used by operators, fault finding on a valve that was showing as in a fault condition on the dcs(this job took most of day)

I don't know if that varies much from the day to day life of an electrician, but that's a typical day. Except for maybe if we were not stuck on one job for so long we would have calibrated something.

A decent understanding of physics is pretty essential in my opinion to understand the instruments and I would strongly advise on brushing on your maths if planning to do a course, you won't really use it in work but you would in class.

Hope this helps ya out

Thanks for the reply

Yes your day is alot different mine would consist of tray trunking pulling cables etc . I would like to get into cleaner work and maybe more technical as its not rocket science to do tray etc

I was looking at 1 year courses would these be worthwhile doing with an electrical trade or would i only be getting the basics ?

2011

conork92 wrote: »

Im looking for information on electrical instrumentation im looking at doing a year course in sligo online or blanchardstown or maybe fas . I am a qualified electrician

Which course is best to do ??

If you post links to the courses it would be easier to advise.

What is involved in instrumentation work ??

No short answer to that. There are many types of instrumentation roles, installation, maintenance, commissioning, calibration etc...

Whats it like to get work after finishing a course ??

A smart experienced/confident electrician with industrial experience with a descent instrumentation qualification should not have a problem finding work I would think. The project that I am working on took on a few instrument techs recently for commissioning.

eurokev

I heard that there is a good one year course in blanchardstown, I suppose the best thing to do is compare the modules with what I am doing in CIT. To see what it covers in terms of that. Tbh what I have done in my could have easily been condensed in to 2yrs, from what I know this is what the course in blanchardstown aims to do. However this comes with its own problems that it will be more difficult, and maybe more suited to someone with experience in the field already, but with a bit of hard work you could get through it. I get by quiet comfortably in my course at the mo but only because I have studied physics and maths to a fairly level in a previous degree course

Stoner

I did a 13 month Fas course a long time ago. It was very good. The electric were very basic, but the PLCs, pneumatic elements etc were very good, as was the electrical control.
If its still the four subject topic then I'd recommend it. You get out of it what you put in but there was a good set up and decent instructors.

I'd imagine that it would be easy to get an instrumentation position from this , or cross over to the like of Hewlett Packard and do some elec/mech work on production lines

HoggyRS

When i was doing e/i most alot of the supervisors were doing or had done the higher cert in instrumentation and control at CIT. That course seems to open alot of doors anyways

instrumentation work with a contractor was different to what Eurokev and others in plant maintenance would of experienced. From what i saw and worked at theres alot of bench testing of instruments (but not neccesarily calibrating). An instrument tech with a contractor doing an installation could do everything from test the instrument before installation by the fitter, to pulling the cable/air line to the instrument, add in any needed containment and then terminate. Workload is certainly easier than the sparks but its prob not the easy/interesting life enjoyed by instrument techs in maintenance.

Its a grand game to be in though, only packed it in myself as couldnt pass my exams(electronics and control in e/i are bitches haha), got into a new trade outside of construction then.