The machine works. The support does not.
Imported equipment is often mechanically sound and electrically capable. What is missing is everything around it: documentation, parts channels, software and someone to call.
The problem is rarely the machine itself.
Equipment imported from China, Turkey, India, Italy, Taiwan or anywhere else tends to fail its owners in the same way. The mechanics are fine. The control system is a mixture of recognisable components and unfamiliar ones, the manual was translated by someone who had not seen the machine, and the supplier's support ended when the warranty did.
That leaves a plant with a working asset it cannot maintain. The usual response, waiting for the supplier to reply, costs months. The alternative is treating it as an engineering problem: work out what is actually inside, document it, and make it supportable locally.
Sometimes that is straightforward, because the controller is a clone of something well known and the drives speak Modbus. Sometimes it is not, because a controller is locked or a motion controller is genuinely proprietary. The only way to know is to look.
We cannot promise we can repair every machine, and we will not pretend otherwise before seeing it. What we can promise is a direct assessment and a clear recommendation, including when that recommendation is to stop spending.
What the work involves.
The same disciplines, applied without the manufacturer's help.
Controller identification
Working out what the PLC actually is. Many are recognisable clones of Mitsubishi, Siemens or Delta platforms and can be read with standard tools.
HMI recovery
Opening, translating and re deploying operator panels, or specifying a supportable replacement where the original cannot be edited.
Drive and servo faults
Decoding fault codes, recovering parameters and finding replacement drives when the original brand has no local presence.
Protocol capture
Listening to Modbus or serial traffic to map registers and document how the machine's parts talk to each other.
Documentation rebuild
Producing the I/O list, wiring drawings and sequence description that should have arrived with the equipment.
Part substitution
Identifying what a component genuinely is, then sourcing a domestically available equivalent.
What we find, in rough order of frequency.
Patterns that recur across imported equipment from many countries.
- Recognisable controller in unfamiliar packaging. A clone or licensed derivative of a mainstream PLC, readable with standard software.
- Standard protocols, non standard documentation. The machine speaks Modbus perfectly well; nobody wrote down the register map.
- Rebranded components. Drives, sensors and contactors that are OEM versions of products available domestically under another name.
- Wiring that does not match the drawing. Field modifications during commissioning that were never recorded.
- Safety circuits that would not pass local review. Worth knowing about independently of whatever fault you called about.
- Locked HMI projects. Common, and usually resolved by replacing the panel rather than fighting it.
- Password protected controllers. Sometimes recoverable through the vendor, sometimes not recoverable at all. This is the most frequent hard stop.
- Proprietary motion controllers. The other hard stop, and the case where retrofitting the control system is often the honest recommendation.
Answers before you call.
No. We named the other page after the most common case, but the situation is identical for equipment from anywhere that has no local support presence. The constraints are about documentation and parts channels, not about the country of origin.
That is the normal starting point for this work. It means reverse engineering rather than escalation, and it means the goal is usually to make the machine locally supportable rather than to restore it to its original configuration.
Sometimes it is the best available option, particularly when the mechanics are sound and the control system is unrecoverable. A retrofit gives you a machine your own staff can maintain, with parts available domestically. We will tell you when we think that is the right call.
Yes, and this is the cheapest point at which to involve us. Reviewing the control system specification before purchase, what PLC, what drives, what documentation and software will be supplied, avoids most of the problems on this page.
More than people expect. Photographs of the panel and nameplates, the fault code and a description of the behaviour often narrow things substantially. Where a remote connection is possible, we can go online with the controller directly.
Send photos and the fault code.
Ten minutes of your time usually gets you a real answer about whether this is fixable.
Or call (801) 946-2710, Monday, Friday, 8:00am, 4:30pm MT