1624 Take Up Reel/System

[fuzzy_cam]

Hello all-

We are all a little confused here at the shop. We have two 1624's, both have the material take-up reel/system (VJ-16TUP30U). On our oldest 1624 (somewhere around 6 years old, still going strong), we are having an issue where the take-up reel is askew. It is causing the material to lift on the right-side of the machine (when facing printer), and causing head strikes. On long print runs we have to go to the machine every 30 minutes or so and manually scoot the media core on the reel over to the left to flatten the material back out.

We are fully aware of the ability to adjust the take up on the left side, and have tried adjusting MANY times back and forth (up and down). I remembered when the tech came from Fellers to help us set up our second 1624... He took a ~4' X 12" piece of paper and made a loop in the end of it. He looped the end of it around the bar (without the core on) and took the other end up to the cutting strip on the machine and adjusted the system to make this paper hit the cut line in the same place on both sides of the printer. As of now, the machine is level and we have the take up reel level as well. I have tried this looped-paper method and it seems that it should be perfect! However, after ~30 minutes of printing, the material starts lifting again and we have to go manually move the core back to the left to flatten the material. We have also tried using multiple cores and switching the metal bar from the other 1624 as well.

The newer printer does not have this issue, and from what I can tell is lined up the same way as the older machine.

The questions I pose to you are, have you ever had this happen before? What was your remedy? Is there any sort of documentation to properly adjust the take up reel? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Solventinkjet]

You probably just have worn out pinch rollers. The right side of the printer fails before the left side because it gets used more.

 

[Darion Judd]

Any luck with this?

 

[fuzzy_cam]

No luck, really. Replaced pinch rollers, checked tension on the media rollers, adjusted it level (and un-level). I ended up laser cutting a 7" acrylic circle that fits on and butts up to the right side of the take up reel. When we print log runs, we make sure to align the media to be right next to that circle. That seems to have been working.

 

[tbaker]

Check the feed side as well. If it isn’t square it can cause skew on the front side. Additionally keep in mind not only up and down need to be in the same position (relative to the platen) but in and out as well. If one side is at the same height but farther out from the platen ( or in this case it sounds like) closer in, it can cause media to inconsistently take up.

One last thing, a good cleaning on all rubber rollers and grit rollers can help smooth out media feed issues.

 

[Pitzu]

Also check if all the pinch roller assemblies have their springs at place (2 springs / pinch roller assembly). Some of them pop out, probably when loading the media.

 

[henryp]

Try printing without attaching the material to the take up unit. If the material tracks straight, then the problem is with the take up unit (possibly not parallel to the platen). If the problem still occurs without the take up, the fault could be with the media roll holders not being aligned, one side could be sagging and is lower than the other.