My name is Chris and welcome to the channel. I'm here to teach you all about the skills and
knowledge it takes to be an instrument technician in industry today. Firstly, if you don't already
know, I'm going to explain what an instrumentation technician is and what it is we do.
I've been an Instrument technician for over a decade now working in the oil and gas industry for the
last six years. An instrument technician generally works on automation and safety equipment within
industry. Industry has various types of process variables that it wishes to control. Here are the
main ones you will find. Pressure, this could be the pressure of gas within pipe work. Temperature, the
temperature of a reactor for example. Flow ,the flow of chemical dosing in a process plant. Level, this
could be the height of liquid in a vessel, and PH this could be the pH of a wastewater system
for example. Instrument technicians interact and work on all the equipment that measures
and controls these process variables, all this equipment forms part of a process control loop
that aims at controlling a process variable at a desired setpoint. A process control loop is made
up of the following parts. You have a process variable, a setpoint, sensor, logic solvers and
actuators. So these are all quite confusing so let's start with an example we are all familiar
with, a home heating system. Now this isn't exactly how all heating systems work, but it will help us
understand a process control loop in terms we are all familiar with. In our example of a home heating
system we have all the components of a process control loop, so let's start with the setpoint.
Now this is the temperature we decide we want our rooms to be so we're nice and comfortable.
You have the process variable, this is the actual temperature of the room at this very moment. You
have the sensor, in this example the thermostat of the heating system is the sensor, it senses
the temperature of the room and sends a signal of the current temperature to the boiler. Moving
on to the logic solver our boiler electronics is acting as the logic solver, now this compares the
setpoint, which is the temperature we want our room to be, to the process variable the actual
temperature of the room and the electronics then decide whether to turn the boiler on or off. We
also have the actuator so the actuator act to manipulate and control the process variable,
our radiators in the room are the actuators when the boiler ignites and pumps hot water
to the radiators, our room start to warm. So all these separate parts all work to keep the room
at the perfect temperature, which in essence is controlling the process variable. Now this is
exactly the same in industry although sometimes things are a lot more complicated. So now we know
what a process control loop is I'm sure you all want to know what do instrument techs do with
these control loops. Well there's quite a few different tasks that an instrument tech will
do. They will do calibration of the sensors, now this is a task that compares the sensors in the
processing plant against a known constant in order to ensure accuracy of the equipment.
Instrument Techs will also perform planned maintenance, now as well as calibration this can also include
function testing of the equipment to make sure it's behaving as expected and hopefully prevent
future breakdowns. Which leads me on to repair, so when planned maintenance fails to prevent equipment
going wrong. Instrument technicians step in and will be tasked with the repair of the failed
instruments, this can often involve very skilled fault finding methods. Now as well as working on
process control loops, Instrument Techs also work on plant safety systems, this involves working on
emergency shutdown systems that automatically put the plant into a safe condition if there
is an emergency. On petrochemical sites there is also equipment that detects fire and gas releases.
Instrument technicians are normally in charge of maintaining and repairing this equipment if
it goes wrong. Now there is a lot, a lot to dive into here, lots of knowledge to be learned. If
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