Cutter Jammed? Y Position Sensor

[midnightmadman]

Please help! My Q100 cutter won't move and the y position sensor keeps coming on when I try to load the media.
I've tried everything that is obvious.
The belt wont move and the cutter head is stuck all the way to the left!

 

[Techman]

Turn off the cutter..

By hand move the cutter to the right.

Reboot the cutter. See what happens.

IF the head is fully to the left and locked there, it could be a good thing. Servo motors lock up when they are holding.. Same with stepper motors.

If you reboot and the head runs all the way to the left,, and jams again,, its dead.

 

[midnightmadman]

Well. Maybe this will help someone else one day.
I opened up the side and forced the gear to move the head and it was caught on a small square rubber stopper that was put on with adhesive. There is one all the way to the left and one all the way to the right.

 

[No Rules]

seems that the y motor is junk in the q-100...my machine 2.5 years old shot have questions for signwarehouse yet to be answered ...cost arm and leg to get fixed...sad...never again

 

[No Rules]

it seems now that the motherboard may have had a glitch, will find out when i get machine back...so now if anyone has problem like i had unplug power source for 30 minutes... mother board will reset itself...ouch!!! tech did not tell me this til today...

 

[heyskull]

About 4 years ago our graphtec plotter/printer jammed up dramatically and made some horrible noises whilst cutting some vinyl.
After removing the material and restarting the machine I found that the y axis wasn't working.
After a lot of searching and asking the tech people they diagnosed the main motherboard to be dead!!!
Well at a price of £3,500 it was dead in the water!!!
So I decided as it's broke already I can't make things much worse.
I took the back of it and removed the board out taking photos as I went to ensure it went back in as before!
On close inspection there are 3 large diodes on the board and after a lot of circuit tracing these are what controls the x,y,and z axis, z being the up and down of the blade. One of the diodes was completely fried and another looked like it had got rather warm. I checked the part numbers of the diodes and found them on Maplins site and bought 3 and tenuously removed and soldered 2 new ones back in.
I refitted the board in and the machine has worked perfectly since!
I have asked a few techs about this and they say it is the first thing that burns out after a jam up and they would just replace the whole board!!!
The cost for this repair ........ £3.50 and a lot of patience!!!!!
Just goes to show we are in a throw away society.
My advice is take the back of and smell the 3 large diodes if these smell horrible they are dead.
Get the part numbers of the diodes buy some and get your local electronics wizard to solder them in.
You have nowt to lose.

SC