Hi, folks - I'm a newcomer to the site, and registered for help with a Gerber GSX plus.
I'm an IT geek providing support for a signmaker (itself part of a bigger organisation that I'm also supporting) on a part-time basis. I managed to fix the problem before being "approved" here, but I thought I'd let everyone know my findings.
The problem was that the plotter was stopping at the same point in every cut - there was nothing significant about the point at which it crashed with much beeping of speakers and flashing of LEDs.
The manual was no use - in the troubleshooting section, there were instructions for retrieving an error code by counting the flashes. There were ten error codes, but this plotter was flashing 12 times (and beeping while it flashed, which it wasn't supposed to do because a single beep was meant to "punctuate" the error code.
A test print of a simple job worked fine. Then I sent a more complex job and that, too, worked without a hitch. So I decided the problem was corrupt data being sent from just that one project, so I told them to work on another one to try and clear the built-up backlog.
Unfortunately, that failed too. My final assertion was that a connection in the cable had been broken – so the data was being sent to the plotter in one big lump and because it couldn’t slow down the transmission, it couldn’t cope. I was partly right.
There are only three wires in the cable. The PC end has a D9 and the printer a D25 connection. The pins are 1-7 3-3 and 4-2 respectively – not an arrangement I’ve ever seen before, but not unusual in that it’s nonstandard.
None showed as open loop on a multimeter – they were all working. The lack of active pins made me check the comms settings, and there it was: hardware flow control was enabled. You need at least five (active) pins for that. One to send, one to receive, a common ground, and pins for clear-to-send and ready-to-send.
I changed the flow control to XON/XOFF and it worked!
This would probably work for other plotters in the range, indeed other manufacturers' plotters, but I'm sure the thread will be moved to a more appropriate home if there's the possibility it might help others.
I'm an IT geek providing support for a signmaker (itself part of a bigger organisation that I'm also supporting) on a part-time basis. I managed to fix the problem before being "approved" here, but I thought I'd let everyone know my findings.
The problem was that the plotter was stopping at the same point in every cut - there was nothing significant about the point at which it crashed with much beeping of speakers and flashing of LEDs.
The manual was no use - in the troubleshooting section, there were instructions for retrieving an error code by counting the flashes. There were ten error codes, but this plotter was flashing 12 times (and beeping while it flashed, which it wasn't supposed to do because a single beep was meant to "punctuate" the error code.
A test print of a simple job worked fine. Then I sent a more complex job and that, too, worked without a hitch. So I decided the problem was corrupt data being sent from just that one project, so I told them to work on another one to try and clear the built-up backlog.
Unfortunately, that failed too. My final assertion was that a connection in the cable had been broken – so the data was being sent to the plotter in one big lump and because it couldn’t slow down the transmission, it couldn’t cope. I was partly right.
There are only three wires in the cable. The PC end has a D9 and the printer a D25 connection. The pins are 1-7 3-3 and 4-2 respectively – not an arrangement I’ve ever seen before, but not unusual in that it’s nonstandard.
None showed as open loop on a multimeter – they were all working. The lack of active pins made me check the comms settings, and there it was: hardware flow control was enabled. You need at least five (active) pins for that. One to send, one to receive, a common ground, and pins for clear-to-send and ready-to-send.
I changed the flow control to XON/XOFF and it worked!
This would probably work for other plotters in the range, indeed other manufacturers' plotters, but I'm sure the thread will be moved to a more appropriate home if there's the possibility it might help others.
