My Mutoh is dancing

[Angela]

Hello, I have a Mutoh Valuejet 1604, 54". When the material is feeding thru it is jumping, skipping every 3 seconds. This occurs when I manually feed material thru and worst of all when I am printing. When I say manually feeding, ya know pushing the forward button. It takes a little while but I can usually get it to stop but not any more, now half way thru the printing process it jumps, skips and ruins the whole print. I have "hopefully" sucessfully attached a picture of the print, just in the hopes it will help. Any ideas, suggestions or comments will be most appreciated.

 

[Angela]

Interesting developement, when there is no material in, it does not skip?

 

[jhanson]

Check your PF encoder scale (the clear plastic wheel located inside the left-hand end cover). Chances are there's either a large piece of dust, some ink, or a scratch on it.

The scale can be cleaned using a lint-free polyester wipe and some rubbing alcohol, the same way you would clean the timing fence above the carriage rail.

 

[Angela]

Thank you so much jhanson. You are right. I called my Mutoh guy and he told me to do the same thing and so far it is working. Thanks so much for letting me know

 

[Robert M]

Encoder

I second the encoder and also suggest you check that it is not hitting the encoder reader (black U shaped plastic part with wires coming out of it)