Austin Childress, co-founder of ASIC Repair Parts, had about six minutes on stage at Mining Disrupt Miami 2024, held June 24–26, 2024. He spent them on the part of mining that rarely gets a slide: operations, maintenance and repair, which he called one of the biggest facets of the industry.
His starting point was people. There are not enough technicians for the work, he said, and the experience that does exist sits mostly abroad.
It's also something that there's unfortunately not many technicians to handle the kind of workload that's out there.
Austin Childress · 0:28
Most of the experience is actually overseas.
Austin Childress · 1:06
Childress said he has been going around trying to train the workforce himself.
Setup first, then the environment
Everything after that, he said, depends on how a site was built, and setup is the most important part of a mining operation. Once it is built, the job is to control the environment as well as possible: good airflow, humidity that is neither too high nor too low, and control of particulates to prevent corrosion. He pointed to firmware and monitoring software as tools that help, and said the real requirement is written procedure.
But basically what's very important is having really good SOPs for your business and your operations.
Austin Childress · 2:10
Maintenance that keeps miners hashing
Maintenance came next. Done properly, it keeps machines mining longer without failing. He tied it to load balancing, so that a facility does not have a fire, and to hashrate, which he called the bottom line.
If we do proper maintenance in our operations we can make sure that our miners can stay mining for a longer period of time without them failing on us.
Austin Childress · 2:31
The routine work is plain: keep particulates from building up, keep bugs out of the filters, and change filters on schedule. Whether a site runs hydro, immersion or air cooling, he said, the systems are similar in essence. The ASIC chips have to stay cool, and there should be no particulates and ideally no corrosion. Many operators push scheduled maintenance off, he said. Filters clog, airflow drops, and miners overheat, especially in summer. Regular checks also show what a site needs to upgrade.
When maintenance slips, repair starts
Poor operations and maintenance lead to more hardware failures, and that is where repair begins. Failed units should be replaced or fixed as fast as possible, which takes skilled technicians. Changing filters is easy, he said. Reading kernel logs and monitoring software, deciding which units to pull and which can keep hashing a while longer, takes knowing the difference.
He described two levels. The first is hardware replacement: swapping fans, power supplies and control boards. The second is component and board-level repair, and that is where the shortage of technicians is greatest.
So here at ASIC Repair Parts, we are a support company.
Austin Childress · 5:24
Childress said ASIC Repair Parts supports farms around the world and that he has trained teams at Bitfarms and Marathon Digital, as well as Kaboomracks, which was at the event, from regular operations and maintenance down to hash board repair. Those are his statements from a short company talk and were not checked with the operators named.
Bitcoin traded at $61,272 on June 24, 2024, the day the event opened. It is $79,647 today.