Last week out of the blue started to get some grinding / rubbing noise as the print head went back and fourth. Talked with a tech from advantage sign supply and he said it's more than likely the y-axis belt pulley. He then went on to say it a good idea to replace the y-axis motor and the other belt pulley. A tech can come out and replace all three for the low low price of $1500!! He then went on to say if I could deal with the noise to continue printing as the motor has a fail save to prevent it from over heating. This was great news as I was of course in the middle of a rather large banner run. That job finished and I was on to the next w/o an issue. The printer ran just fine, but still was making this horrible noise. Then at the last 8" of a 10' banner the print heads just stopped in the middle of a pass. I shut the machine down and manually moved the heads back to home. Turn the printer on and all was well again. Ran the banner again and in the beginning of the second banner the same thing happened, this time I hit enter on the LCD and the head would move 5-10" and stop, 5-10" then stop, 5-10" and stop with each time i was hitting enter.
I knew the pulley had finally stopped working, so I found the part online. The old one had metal shavings in the bottom as well as the top portion where I assume the bearings were was completely missing. After a bit of struggle with stripped screws and no room to work I got the replacement pulley in. Put the machine back together and turned it on. It went through it's motions with the heads moving the heads back and fourth and wiping. This couldn't be done before it would error out, so this was a great sign! I loaded some scrap material and hit roll.... the heads went back and fourth to check the first edge and then got about a third of the way down the line and some rubbing noise almost and threw up error code 43, then flashed y axis. I hit enter and the head slowly creeps back to home. I tried it again with the same result. I even moved the head manually over the left side of the machine, turned it on and it goes all the way home w/o an issue (going slow of course). The code comes up when it goes fast to check the media, gets a 3rd down and stops.
In searching online I found that code could be the Y-axis motor, luckily I have an associate who has this machine in pieces and let me borrow his motor. I'm getting the same result with the replaced motor!
Any insight on the next step to take would be great!!
Thank You
I knew the pulley had finally stopped working, so I found the part online. The old one had metal shavings in the bottom as well as the top portion where I assume the bearings were was completely missing. After a bit of struggle with stripped screws and no room to work I got the replacement pulley in. Put the machine back together and turned it on. It went through it's motions with the heads moving the heads back and fourth and wiping. This couldn't be done before it would error out, so this was a great sign! I loaded some scrap material and hit roll.... the heads went back and fourth to check the first edge and then got about a third of the way down the line and some rubbing noise almost and threw up error code 43, then flashed y axis. I hit enter and the head slowly creeps back to home. I tried it again with the same result. I even moved the head manually over the left side of the machine, turned it on and it goes all the way home w/o an issue (going slow of course). The code comes up when it goes fast to check the media, gets a 3rd down and stops.
In searching online I found that code could be the Y-axis motor, luckily I have an associate who has this machine in pieces and let me borrow his motor. I'm getting the same result with the replaced motor!
Any insight on the next step to take would be great!!
Thank You
