Airmen solve X-ray mystery, save $103K machine Published Feb. 2, 2016 By George Woodward 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- Most of us hate when things break, but for the 82nd Medical Support Squadron’s biomedical equipment repair team, that’s when the fun starts. So when the 82nd Dental Squadron's $103,000 x-ray machine stopped working Jan. 15, they were excited to meet the challenge. “That’s what we live for,” said Staff Sgt. Joshua Meyer, NCOIC of Scheduled Maintenance, “finding that one piece of the puzzle that will make something work.” The “thing” in question is technically called a panoramic/cephalometric/3D cone beam volumetric tomography unit, but is familiar to most people as the machine at the dentists that rotates around the head to take a full image of our teeth. “The machine is critical for diagnosis and treatment planning,” said Col. Haris Ehland, commander of the 82nd Dental Squadron. “Not only would it have been expensive to replace, but it would have been a major inconvenience to our patients, because we would have had to refer them elsewhere for x-rays.” Fortunately, the three-member biomedical repair team was up to the challenge. Senior Airman Bright Mills was the first to respond. “I started by doing an operational check on the unit – connections, cables – checking for something either obviously wrong or something out of the blue,” he said. When he couldn’t find anything obvious or easily fixed, Mills called the company’s tech support line. “I spent hours on the phone with them, going through every process they had,” he said. “We tested the network, switched out sensors, changed cables, refreshed software, everything.” Still unable to identify the problem, he consulted with Staff Sgt. Gerry Reed, NCOIC of Biomedical Equipment Repair, who’s had extensive experience with the machine. “Senior Airman Mills’ troubleshooting eliminated most of the possible issues,” Reed said, “and based on my experience with the unit, I started by looking at network issues. This machine is a little different than most, because it has two modes – a 2D side that is on the Air Force network, and a 3D side that uses an independent local network.” Reed tried multiple solutions, from reinstalling and upgrading the software, to logging in directly as an administrator, to bypassing the networks entirely. “Finally I disabled the communication function to the network to prove that the machine itself was not the problem. I then re-enabled the network function and used a whole different computer system with updated software – and the problem came back,” he said. Reed then contacted the company’s technical support again where they suggested that the network card needed to be replaced, although Reed had his doubts. As fate would have it, though, Reed was scheduled for leave – and so turned the project over to Meyer, who was just returning from leave of his own. “That’s one of the cool things about our shop. Sometimes in the civilian world the focus is on standing out as an individual and securing your job, but in the Air Force, we all know that we succeed best when we work together and can rely on each other,” he said. “Especially now that we’ve gone from eight people to three, we need to be a team and our communication needs to be spot on.” Meyer took all the information gathered by Mills and Reed, and went back to the service manuals. “I got back on line with the tech support people, and started from square one only to end up in the same predicament, once again, out of solutions. Their support however, was great – they even sent $5,000 worth of parts to us, free of charge. I replaced each part one at a time, hoping to zero in on the cause. I essentially refurbished the whole thing, but it was still not working.” But Meyer was determined. “If it’s a puzzle, I’m dead set on fixing it,” he said. The problem stayed on his mind, even at home, until the answer came to him over the weekend. “I had noticed that one of the sensors’ receptors was responding to commands meant for another sensor. I realized it was freezing the entire system,” he said. “It sounds simple, but it’s actually kind of weird – it’s like having a flat tire on your car that’s somehow caused by not having gas in your tank.” Monday morning, he came in and verified the problem. The solution, in the end, was simple – remove the sensor causing the problem, which, it turned out, was not being used anymore since the dental clinic stopped performing orthodontic care. The team contacted the company tech support team and walked them through the solution, and they added it to their support manuals. “Hopefully, it will save someone else a lot of time and trouble,” Meyer said. In all, the team spent more than 50 hours getting the machine back on line – while they continued doing the rest of their job, which includes supporting more than 1,200 pieces of equipment. “We handle over 150 scheduled work orders every month, plus another 50-60 repair work orders,” Reed said. “We have a hand in the entire life-cycle of medical equipment, cradle-to-grave.” And not just at the clinic. The three Airmen also maintain all of the Automated External Defibrillators across Sheppard AFB as well as those supporting the Air Force unit at Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth – all living up to their squadron’s motto: “82 MDSS: The Best Supports the Rest.”