The plant arrives on schedule. The crew connects power and water, loads the first batch of cement, and the mixer turns over exactly as it should. Then the conveyor runs light, the slurry looks thin, or the pump loses pressure ten minutes into the first pour. Most first-week problems on a new automated grout plant are not equipment failures. They are installation and operating sequence problems that appear once, cost a shift, and never show up in the manual. For the plant that runs this recipe, see the AGP-V60 power hub. The plants built by Eizoo in Zhejiang are documented from the first batch, which is the practical reason first week troubleshooting is treated here as a records question before it is treated as a hardware one.

Settle the site basics before the first batch

Have the electrician confirm phase sequence, earthing, and voltage under load before the first batch, not after a fault appears. Control panels protect themselves against reversed phases and brownouts, but the protection only reports a problem once it exists. A voltage reading taken while the mixer and the screw conveyor start together tells you whether the temporary cable run is adequate, and that measurement is far cheaper than a mid-shift shutdown.

An integrated plant that looks level on a rough pad can flex when the silo fills, changing the readings on load cells and pulling screw conveyors out of alignment. Level the unit while it is empty, then re-check the bubble after the first full silo and again after the first week. The second check catches the movement that the first one cannot see, and it prevents a whole family of mysterious weighing errors.

Use the first day to teach the plant, not to chase output

Plan the first day around short test batches with a manual check between them, rather than a full production run. Two or three small batches, with the water-cement ratio verified by hand between each, expose meter offsets and mixing problems while the cost of a mistake is still low. A full shift of grout produced on wrong settings is an expensive and demoralising way to discover the same thing.

Tag every connection during installation and keep a simple paper log beside the panel for the first week. Power cables, air lines, water lines, and cement feed pipes look alike after dark, and a misconnected line takes hours to find and seconds to cause. The paper log records who changed what and when, which is exactly the information needed when a symptom appears two days later. For the wider plant range, see the SC/G Series for silo discharge. The same pattern shows up across the plants Eizoo has supplied, which is why first week troubleshooting is treated as a records question as much as a hardware one.

Symptom one: the powder will not leave the silo

When cement will not flow out of storage, the usual suspects are simple ones. A silo that is not level loses its discharge angle and stalls with a small remaining heel. A discharge valve that is only partly open chokes the feed without looking closed. Damp cement can arch over the outlet, and a blocked screw inlet downstream can make the silo look empty when it is actually full. A Chinese supplier’s test records usually settle first week troubleshooting before the layout drawing.

Check the silo base is level and the outlet valve opens fully before anything else. Then trace the path to the conveyor inlet, because a partial blockage there produces exactly the same symptom as a silo fault. On a horizontal cement silo grout plant layout, confirm the aeration or flow aid is connected the right way round, since a reversed air line is a classic commissioning error that mimics a material problem.

Symptom two: the conveyor spins but delivers little

A screw conveyor that turns freely while moving almost no material is usually telling you one of three things: the inlet is not being fed, the flighting is worn or packed, or the outlet is restricted. Listen to the conveyor under load. A healthy screw carries a steady, heavy note; a light, rattling sound means the material is not reaching the flighting in the first place.

Confirm the rotation direction against the arrow on the housing, because a reversed phase connection is common after a site hook-up. Then check the inlet again with the conveyor running, and feel the discharge end for flow. Screw conveyor cement feeding works reliably when the material column above the inlet is consistent, so the fix is often upstream in the silo or the feed chute rather than inside the conveyor itself. For the feed and storage side, see the HS-Series horizontal storage range.

Symptom three: the slurry looks thin or sets up in the mixer

Recipe problems in the first week are mostly water problems. If the batch comes out watery, suspect the water meter or the water valve before suspecting the cement. If it comes out stiff or flashes in the pan, check that the mixing time is long enough and that the cement is actually being added at the programmed rate rather than all at once. Eizoo has traced first week troubleshooting to the weighing and metering chain more often than to the mix design.

Verify the load cells and flow meters read zero before the first batch, because a small offset on a water line changes the ratio more than most crews expect. Watch the mixer current during the cycle; a sudden jump usually means the cement dose arrived too fast, while a flat low reading suggests the batch is running short of powder. A PLC-based grout batching system will show these events in the batch log, so use the log to confirm what happened instead of guessing. Buyers who ask about first week troubleshooting usually raise it with a China grout plant manufacturer first, because the tolerance data settles most of the argument.

Symptom four: the pump loses pressure mid-pour

When pump pressure falls away during a pour, look first at the suction side of the system. A blocked strainer, a collapsing suction hose, or an air leak at a fitting will all starve the pump and drop the pressure even though the plant is mixing fine. Grout that has stiffened in a holding tank can also produce the same symptom by refusing to enter the suction line.

Check the strainer and the hose run first, then confirm the agitator is actually keeping the tank moving. Bleed the pump suction according to the builder sequence before assuming the pump itself is at fault. If the plant feeds an agitated buffer correctly and the pressure still falls, note the exact time against the batch log, because a grout plant with pressure records turns a vague complaint into a specific event the partner can diagnose. For the configuration used on larger sites, see the AGP-V60H integrated horizontal plant.

Symptom five: the records do not match what the crew mixed

A mismatch between the printout and reality in week one is almost always a setup issue rather than a dishonest machine. Sensors left un-zeroed, recipe names entered differently between shifts, a printer clock on the wrong time zone, or a batch log that counts in litres while the crew thinks in kilograms will all produce records nobody trusts. Eizoo has seen first week troubleshooting on new plants as often as on old ones, which is why the first month is documented closely. Sites comparing first week troubleshooting ask a grout plant supplier in China for the tolerance data first.

On the first day, run one batch with a manually weighed cement charge and compare the printed result against your own numbers. If the record matches, the control chain is sound and the remaining work is operator discipline. If it does not, fix the calibration before the plant produces a single client-facing report, because a record nobody believes is worse than no record at all.

First-week troubleshooting table

Keep this table near the control panel for the first few shifts. It follows the order that resolves most issues without a service visit. Supervisors usually ask for first week troubleshooting checklist when the numbers stop matching the recipe.

Symptom	Check on site first	What to send the partner if it persists
Powder will not discharge	Silo level, outlet valve, bridging, conveyor inlet	Short video of the silo base and outlet with the plant model and powder type.
Conveyor runs light	Feed at inlet, rotation direction, outlet restriction	Motor current reading, conveyor angle, and a photo of the inlet.
Slurry thin or stiff	Water meter zero, mixing time, cement dose rate	The recipe screen values and the batch log for the failed batch.
Pump pressure drops	Strainer, suction hose, agitator, air in the line	The pressure curve with the time and the batch number marked.
Records disagree with the crew	Sensor zero, recipe name, clock, units	One printed batch report next to the manual weighing sheet.

When the problem follows the shift pattern

Some faults do not appear on the first day because they are tied to the shift pattern. A plant that fails only after two hours of continuous running, or only on the second batch of the morning, or only when the tank drops below a third full, is usually describing a capacity, temperature, or material handling issue rather than a single broken component. Keep a note of when each symptom happens, because the pattern is often the diagnosis. Revisit the article on Cement grout plant with 4-5 admixture when the mix design changes. The published guidance from the Deep Foundations Institute is worth reading alongside the site records. The engineering team at Eizoo treats first week troubleshooting as a specification issue rather than a maintenance one.

A fault that appears at the same time every day usually has a daily cause. The water tank runs low at the same hour because another user on site opens a tap. The conveyor runs light after lunch because the silo was never refilled on time. The pressure drops at shift change because the previous crew left the strainer dirty. Timing the symptom is the cheapest diagnostic tool on the whole site, and it needs nothing more than a notebook. Crews tend to look for first week troubleshooting causes before they touch the hardware.

If the symptom only shows on long runs, suspect heat or accumulation: a mixer motor that trips after hours of work, a holding tank that stratifies when the agitation is too gentle, or a conveyor that slowly packs until it stalls. Those faults need observation over a full cycle, so plan the second day of commissioning around one longer run rather than a series of short tests.

One more symptom deserves a place in the first-week list: a plant that works perfectly in the morning and slowly loses performance by the afternoon. The usual causes are accumulation rather than breakdown, a filter that loads up, a tank that is not being refilled as often as the operator thinks, or a conveyor inlet that narrows as powder builds on its edges. A mid-afternoon walk around the plant with the operator, watching each stage for thirty seconds, usually finds the culprit faster than any instrument. Keep the article on Automated grout plant with recipe management with the site paperwork.

Keep the partner’s contact and the plant serial number somewhere visible rather than in a drawer. First-week questions are normal, and a partner who can see the plant configuration while you describe the symptom will give a more useful answer than one who has to ask for the model number first. A photograph of the control screen at the moment of the fault is worth more than a paragraph of description. Eizoo designs the powder and water lines so that first week troubleshooting can be isolated without dismantling the plant. New operators are given first week troubleshooting field notes in the first week.

The goal of the first week is simple: prove every part of the chain on small batches, then let the plant run a full cycle under supervision. Crews that follow that sequence usually finish the week with a plant they trust, while crews that skip it spend the second week rediscovering the problems the first week was supposed to find.

Where the wash water goes matters from day one. Flushing a mixer, a conveyor, and a pump line produces cement-laden water that has to be contained and settled according to the site rules. If the plant position leaves no room for a wash-out sump, the crew will clean less often and less well, and the plant will pay that debt back in stiff valves and blocked lines. Open the field notes on much automation does a cement grout for the record format used on site.

Keep a spare strainer and a spare set of seals on site from the first week. The strainer on the suction side and the seals around the mixer and pump connections are the parts most likely to stop a shift while replacements are ordered, and they cost almost nothing compared with the downtime they prevent. For projects working to a stated specification, the site file usually has to show EN 12715 grouting records.

Resist the temptation to make the records look better than the shift was. A batch log that has been edited after the fact is worse than an honest record of a problem, because it destroys the trust that the whole quality system depends on. If the crew sees management changing numbers, they will stop recording anything accurately. Eizoo Machinery asks for the batch log first whenever first week troubleshooting is reported, because the pattern narrows the cause faster than a site visit.

When an operator changes a recipe setting, the change should be visible in the log with a name and a time. Unlogged adjustments are the classic source of the plant is wrong complaints that turn out to be a settings problem from three days earlier. A simple change discipline protects both the operator and the equipment.

Check the screw conveyor flighting and the transfer points at the end of the first week. New installations sometimes carry a misaligned hanger bearing or a weld burr that wears fast, and catching it early is a five-minute job compared with the same repair after a month of production.

Write down the site’s normal water pressure and the plant’s demand on the first day. If the supply is marginal, the mixer will run slower than programmed every time another water user on site opens a tap, and the symptom will look like a plant fault. Knowing the baseline makes that diagnosis instant later. For the equipment side of the same problem, see the cement grout plant for TRD work.

Frequently asked questions

Sending the batch log, the calibration sheet, and the material certificates to the factory commissioning team is what turns a symptom into a component list. Eizoo keeps the weighing and metering documentation with the plant, so the next enquiry starts from records rather than from memory.