Evidence worth collecting before the condition changes
- Exact alarm or trip indication and time
- What changed immediately before the stop
- Operating load, product, speed, temperature, pressure, or other relevant condition
- Recent maintenance, adjustments, component replacements, or control changes
- Frequency, duration, and whether reset alone restores operation
Questions that improve the diagnosis
- Is the event repeatable under the same condition?
- Does the protection device or controller identify a specific cause?
- Is the machine actually overloaded, or only being commanded differently?
- What evidence distinguishes electrical, mechanical, control, utility, and process causes?
What not to conclude too early
- Repeated resets without recording the trigger
- Replacing the same component without proving why it failed
- Changing protection or control settings to suppress a trip without an engineering review