HELP PLEASE - Graphtec FC7000 Carriage STUCK

[fresh]

Help! Our plotter isn't working this morning... the carriage is stuck in the right-most position, we are unable to slide the carriage with the rollers up. When we try to reset, the plotter give us a "Y-Position Error."

Yesterday we had a problem with deep cuts, I think because the teflon strip needs to be replaced. I don't know if these two issues are related... Any ideas?

 

[Dennis422]

Did you try contacting Graphtec?

 

[fresh]

We figured it out... There is a rubber bumper that prevents the pen carriage from moving all the way over to either side. The right side bumper must have cracked, and the carriage got hung up on it. It was impossible to take the carriage off because we did not have access to one of the screws, so we had to pretty much disassemble the entire top of the machine to even see what the problem was. I'm not even sure how they dislodged it, but right now we are putting everything back and hopefully we didn't do any residual damage to the motors or electrical when the carriage was stuck.

 

[fresh]

Did you try contacting Graphtec?

We called and left a message. If memory serves me, I don't think they've been particularly helpful with issues in the past. I'm pretty sure they told me I'd have to replace the entire carriage at one point, when the problem was solved with literally two drops of oil.

 

[Dennis422]

Sometimes it takes a bit, but they always return my calls.
Glad you fixed it and thanks for sharing the fix.
I have FC8600-130, so far so good. Some issues, but the last firmware update and the reset helped with that.

 

[fresh]

Sometimes it takes a bit, but they always return my calls.
Glad you fixed it and thanks for sharing the fix.
I have FC8600-130, so far so good. Some issues, but the last firmware update and the reset helped with that.

They actually called us back a little while ago and told me we should be able to find a replacement bumper at any hardware store. I'm happy we were able to fix it ourselves, and hopefully if someone else has a similar problem they will be able to fix it faster than we did... It took at least 2 of us almost 4 hours today to fix it. I know it could have been much worse, but something so simple shouldn't have taken that long to repair.

 

[Kenny Noble]

We figured it out... There is a rubber bumper that prevents the pen carriage from moving all the way over to either side. The right side bumper must have cracked, and the carriage got hung up on it. It was impossible to take the carriage off because we did not have access to one of the screws, so we had to pretty much disassemble the entire top of the machine to even see what the problem was. I'm not even sure how they dislodged it, but right now we are putting everything back and hopefully we didn't do any residual damage to the motors or electrical when the carriage was stuck.

Genius, thanks for posting the fix. I had exactly the same problem this morning and got the plotter going double quick. Thanks again.