Power and Cooling for Medical Equipment — Level 2: Fault-Finding
From the trip, alarm or overheating to the failed part: UPS, mains quality, chillers, cooling loops and room climate
Part of the program: Power and Cooling Engineer for Medical Equipment — program (8 h) →
Level 1 taught you to see the building behind the scanner: the supply, the UPS, the chiller, the loops and the room air, and who owns each of them. Level 2 starts when one of those links has failed and everybody says it is somebody else's. This course teaches the engineer to put the logs of the scanner, the UPS and the chiller on one timeline, to prove which link failed with recordings and trends, and then to follow the fault inside that link: rectifier, inverter, bypass and battery string in the UPS; sags, neutral and earth faults, generators and transfer switches in the supply; compressor, condenser, expansion and pressure faults in the chiller; pumps, flow switches, strainers, air and water quality in the loops; and the HVAC of the scan and equipment rooms. It ends where the real work ends: restarting an imaging system safely after a power or cooling failure, with the checks and records that prove it is ready.
The UPS logged an overload. The chiller compressor had started in the same second.
- UPS inverter boards and IGBT modules are replaced because the display said inverter fault, while the choke, the driver supply or the aged capacitor that started the chain is left in place to kill the new part.
- Chillers are recharged with refrigerant that never leaked, because nobody looked through the condenser coil, read the pressures against the outdoor temperature or checked what changed after the last maintenance visit.
- After a long outage or a cooling stop, scanners are switched on in the wrong order, on a UPS still on bypass or with the loop still warm, and the second failure of the day is worse than the first.
After the course you can
Curriculum
Collect and align the records of the scanner, the UPS, the chiller, a power analyser and the room loggers on one timeline, separate the first cause from its consequences, and hand the proven fault to the owner of the failed link with evidence that settles the question.free
20 min02UPS at Level 2: rectifier, inverter, bypass, battery strings and safe DC work
Read a UPS's log and measured values to place a fault in the rectifier and DC link, the inverter and its drivers, the static bypass or the battery string, find the first cause behind a locked-out inverter, test a battery string properly, and work around DC and battery systems safely within your authorisation.25 min03Mains quality and earthing faults behind equipment failures: sags, harmonics, neutral and earth, generators
Match equipment symptoms to the supply phenomenon behind them, tell a local from an upstream disturbance with a recording, recognise neutral, earth and harmonic faults and the traps of generators and transfer switches, and plan a measurement that answers a specific question.25 min04Chillers for MRI, CT and angio: refrigeration faults, compressors, condensers, alarms and where your work stops
Read a chiller's pressures, temperatures and alarms as a pattern that points at the condenser, the charge, a restriction, the compressor, the water side or the controller, brief a certified refrigeration technician precisely, and keep your own work to what an imaging engineer may do.25 min05Cooling loops and heat exchangers: pumps, flow switches, filters, water quality, leaks and air
Locate a fault in a primary or secondary cooling loop from pressures, temperatures and flow, tell a pump, a blockage, air, a leak, a fouled exchanger and a faulty flow switch apart, and keep the cold head compressor's water supply as dependable as its power.25 min06Room climate and HVAC at Level 2: precision air conditioners, humidity, condensation, air flow and dust
Find why a scan or equipment room is out of its climate limits, read precision air conditioner alarms, solve humidity and condensation problems with dew point reasoning, find hot spots and dust sources, and agree corrections with the HVAC owner.20 min07Monitoring and prevention: remote alarms, trending, maintenance plans, spares and emergency procedures
Design monitoring that still works when the supply it watches has failed, use trends to plan work before failures, build a maintenance plan and a spares list for power and cooling, and write emergency procedures for power or cooling loss that people can follow at night.20 min08Complex cases and return to service after power or cooling failures
Assess what a power or cooling event did to an imaging site, restart the infrastructure and the scanner in a safe order without causing a second failure, verify readiness before patients, untangle faults with more than one cause, and close the event with records and a review with every owner.25 min—Exam
25 · 40 min · 75 %
The certificate
Pass the exam and get a certificate of course completion with your name, hours and score. Every certificate has a unique number and a public verification page, so an employer or a customer can check it in one click. It confirms completion of the course; it is not an educational document (diploma) and not a manufacturer authorisation.
Who it is for
Who it is for
- Engineers who have completed Power and Cooling for Medical Equipment (Level 1) or have equivalent experience
- Field engineers who maintain CT, MRI, angio and X-ray systems and their UPS units and chillers
- Hospital biomedical, clinical engineering and facility teams responsible for imaging infrastructure
Who teaches
Written by a service engineer working with medical equipment since 2014, including 6.5 years at GE Healthcare and service supervision at Mindray, together with the engineers of Service Engineer.
FAQ
Is this manufacturer training?
No. It is independent, vendor-neutral training. It does not replace the documentation and procedures of the scanner, UPS, generator or chiller manufacturer, and it does not grant authorisation, service passwords or access to service software.
Do I need Level 1 first?
Power and Cooling for Medical Equipment (Level 1) is the prerequisite: the power and heat paths of an imaging site, earthing systems and medical locations, UPS topologies and battery basics, the refrigeration cycle and loops, room climate and basic planned maintenance are assumed here and not repeated. Electronics and Power Supplies, Electrical Safety, and the MRI and CT Level 2 courses are referred to where their topics meet this one.
Will I be allowed to work on refrigerant circuits, switchgear or battery strings after it?
No. Refrigerant work is reserved for certified personnel under local rules, building switchgear and generators for qualified electrical staff with a permit, and UPS battery work for staff trained and authorised on that UPS. The course teaches what to measure, what to read and how to prove a fault, so that the right person does the right repair.
Does it teach UPS board repair?
It teaches fault-finding to the block and the replaceable part. Component-level repair of drivers, power supplies and power stages, and the safe first power-up after it, are covered in the Electronics and Power Supplies course.
What does the certificate say?
Your name, the course, the hours, the date and your exam score, with a unique number and a public verification page.
Can my company buy seats for a team?
Yes: five seats and a progress overview for the manager.
Languages?
English and Russian.