Belt Tension Gauge needed for adjustment?

[SIGNTIME]

Can I adjust the belt tension on my printer without the tension gauge or is this a bad idea? I have a knocking noise as the carriage moves past the half way point while traveling away from the capping station, the noise happens more often with fast head speeds. There seems to be a lot of movement ( up and down wiggling) with the white drive belt when printing I think I just need to tighten the tension but not to sure how much. Anyone do this by feel or any other tricks? I think I would just call my dealer before buying the gauge for $180, but I would like to be able to do this myself.

 

[SIGNTIME]

can I just move the left side pully to the left an 1/8" inch or so?

 

[Jack Knight1979]

Tighten the pulley until the slack is just out of the belt when operating.

 

[kanini]

Is it a VS? I had the same noise, asked the tech about it and he just said "nah, don't worry". I guess he wants me to run it until something VERY expensive breaks lol. He told me it's from the belt but that I don't need to do anything about it. I have a VS-640 and it's when running 54" materials when the carriage turns the sound comes.

 

[SIGNTIME]

xj 540 ... i have had little noises that also have been told to ignore but this one is much louder at first i ran over thinking the media was sticking up at the heads were hitting it as they went by

 

[Robert M]

Belt tension guage

The gauge that came in my first official Roland tool kit was a cheap fan belt tension gauge available at any auto parts store.