[Sunro]

Well, here we go again!

We are experiencing a very different form of the infamous Error 1001D on our BlazerPro.

When a print pass starts, everything works normally ... the printer moves out to the Index position, the print head does it's usual dance in and out of the capping station a few times, the U-shaped long bar rotates correctly, and the pass starts ok.

BUT ... at the end of the pass, when the printer returns to the home position and the print head is about to go into the capping station (before the bar even tries to rotate back to its level position), the carriage moves a bit and suddenly stops dead in its tracks, and the error code appears. It behaves as if the print head encounters something that overloads the carriage motor (just like a head strike). There is nothing in the way of it going into the park position and there doesn't seem to be any extra resistance to carriage motion if I manually push it into the capping station.

I have installed a new capping station, but this problem started before then. It happens in "bunches" and then goes away for a while.

All moving parts are clean and lubricated, and print quality is excellent when we don't encounter the problem. The carriage drive belt is new and clean, and the motor gear teeth are clean. The firmware has been reset a few times, no luck. We've even reinstalled FastArtist and FastRIP just in case.

The question boils down to: Why does parking the print head work ok at the Index position, but it sometimes fails when in the Home position. It doesn't make any sense.

Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

With thanks for your suggestions,
Chuck

 

[Support2012]

Since the problem is intermittent, I'll focus on what could cause this behavior and
leave out electrical considerations.

First, check the 3 sensors-Home, Index and Paper Length.
Home and Index are on the inside-remove the long red side panel on the white ink side,
Make sure they are not loose, and clean with an alcohol wipe.
Paper Length sensor is on the top, next to the white side rail the printer moves on.
There is a piece of aluminum next to the rail that this sensor goes through.

You said you replaced the belt. If the tension is not correct, it will cause this also.

The Carriage assembly itself is dirty. The "release lever" (the Blue piece) you push
to manually release the printhead from the capping station-on the left is the paper cutter,
on the right is a roundish half ball plastic piece-make sure it is clean.
I have never had the motor go bad, or the solenoid that releases it during normal functions go bad either.

That blue piece with the tall bolt you press to release, has 2 "set screws" close to the blue piece.
As a last resort, loosen them and turn the bolt counterclockwise until it stops.

Seems to me dirt is your issue (sensors, capping release mechanism).

The tension of the belt may be a cause too. Those crazy Epson people use a $2000 sound sensing
meter placed by the belt and you "pluck" it to get a reading.
Push on the middle of the belt. It should not feel too tight or too loose.
Sorry, but no other way to describe this. Tension can be adjusted from the CMYK side
(remove the silver panel) and you can insert a screwdriver to adjust.
IF YOU DO, mark the frame from where it was BEFORE you adjust it, in case you need
to return back to the default position.

Best of luck

Michael

 

[Sunro]

Thanks for your suggestions Michael!

It could easily be shirt lint getting in where it's not wanted ... keeping the printer clean is a never-ending job.

What's most mysterious in my mind is that this only happens at the Home end of printer travel. I'll give the three sensors a careful blast of canned air and an alcohol wipe anyway ... it can't hurt. I have verified that the white gear-trip lever and capping station move freely when the print head parks, but in this case the carriage doesn't get that far before the error occurs.

I could look at the motor reverse-EMF signal with an oscilloscope but that might not prove anything. That signal is noisy most times.

Here's something new ... we switched off the printer for a few hours, and now it works. I'm wondering if there's a component on the motherboard that might be heating up. Ambient temperature and humidity in our print shop are very closely controlled, but there's not a lot of air circulating inside the Epson chassis.

 

[Support2012]

There should be nothing on the Epson main board heating up.
The DC Control Board, however...
There are 2 blue capacitors by the glass fuses. And a large one on the other side
next to a plug with 2 or 3 wires on it. These are actually slow blow fuses.
After running it for a while, see if they are hot to the touch. This would indicate
the printer is somewhat binding.

 

[Sunro]

Thanks muchly! I'll have a look at those components.

Is the DC control board the one that is bolted vertically behind the capping station and carriage motor?

The fact that the print head works normally and prints are excellent, but then the motor overload safety kicks in instantly, makes me wonder. I'm tempted to monitor the motor's feedback voltage to see if there is a higher than normal spike when the error occurs ... that would indicate some sort of binding. The spike would be *very* short-lived.

I could cheat big-time and put a small ceramic capacitor across the feedback terminals on the back of the motor, but that would probably screw things up ... curing the symptom and not the disease.


Life is full of little challenges

 

[Support2012]

It is highly unlikely it is the motor. Flat-out replacing it many times never solved this error.
Testing it with a meter is also fairly useless. If it is motor related, it's because the belt/dust/dirt
is causing a "slip" somewhere, which the Encoder Strip will recognize and report an error.
Clean the Encoder Strip sensor.

The DC Board is located under the aluminum cover, under the shirtboard tray.
The board you mentioned is a cause of a lot of issues, but they are NOT sporadic
and if it's that the machine will not work at all.

 

[Sunro]

Thanks! I have seen that board, stuffed in next to the original bits underneath, when I had to replace a motherboard a couple of years ago. (And I used that opportunity to replace that pesky printhead fuse with a rear-panel fuseholder). At the time I noticed that the large fuse holder on the DC board was almost touching the aluminum cover, so I added an insulating strip between them.

I'll take the cover off the DC board and check component temperatures whenever we get that error. But in the mean time the printer is chugging along nicely. I did notice that this is Friday 13th

 

[Support2012]

THE tech support person's day from hell!!
People do stupid things in life, and machines DO go whacky!!

 

[Support2012]

I see you're in Canada. You can contact Claude at CMB in Canada.
He can help out, he is very knowledgeable, should you need on-site service.
I've met Claude, and he contacts me from time to time with issues himself,
and he's a really nice guy.

Michael

 

[equipmentzone]

Thanks muchly! I'll have a look at those components.

Is the DC control board the one that is bolted vertically behind the capping station and carriage motor?

The fact that the print head works normally and prints are excellent, but then the motor overload safety kicks in instantly, makes me wonder. I'm tempted to monitor the motor's feedback voltage to see if there is a higher than normal spike when the error occurs ... that would indicate some sort of binding. The spike would be *very* short-lived.

I could cheat big-time and put a small ceramic capacitor across the feedback terminals on the back of the motor, but that would probably screw things up ... curing the symptom and not the disease.


Life is full of little challenges

Here is a picture of the dc motor control board for the Blazer Pro Printer for those not familiar with what they look like.


Harry
_

 

[Support2012]

BTW, what's the serial# of your machine? That tells me a lot about it.

Michael

 

[Sunro]

It's a 4880-based machine, which was a warranty replacement for an earlier 4800-based BlazerPro which had several problems that couldn't be remedied in the field.

This machine has been a real work horse for about 4 years. Fortunately my background is electronics and computers, so learning how to repair problems is not difficult.

Serial# is TJB-B8193-0408.

Underneath there were a few rough mechanical things I fixed up, especially the long bed-height drive shaft which kept jumping gear teeth, and one of the worm-drive reduction gears which had worked loose, causing some "interesting" alignment anomalies. Those problems were easy to fix.

The only thing that bothers me (a lot) is the worm-drive servo motor which vibrates a lot when the printer isn't moving, as if it's rapidly hunting for its resting position. Some day that's going to wear out the motor bearing.

Thanks again for your very valuable suggestions!

 

[Sunro]

Just to bring you up to date (Saturday 14th) ...
I cleaned the three optical sensors under the printer with a blast of air plus a wipe with alcohol. It didn't fix the problem.

A few additional bits of information:
- As I mentioned before, this error occurs only when the printer is in the Home position.
- Things like head cleaning in the Home position works fine, and that requires several head-park operations, so the print head is definitely not binding.
- When booting up the printer, the boot sequence is normal, and the print head parks over the capping station ok before the printer moves back Home.
- The sensor for the long rotating bar (next to the CMYK tanks) seems to be working ok because it behaves correctly when starting a print pass. If I remember correctly, this is a magnetic sensor, so dust shouldn't be a problem. It's little cam arm moves freely.
- It doesn't matter if the print pass is very short and quick, or complex and long, so it doesn't seem to depend on how much the carriage motor has to work (i.e. the motor drive circuitry doesn't have to work hard).
- It's the combination of Home position, rotating bar not level (i.e. in the printing position) and end-of-pass that triggers the problem. The error occurs before the bar even tries to rotate (i.e. no motor noise). The print head carriage moves a few millimetres and then stops dead in its tracks before it moves over the capping station.

I'm trying to figure out the logic behind all of this, hoping I can deduce what the problem may be. Sometimes switching the printer off for a while fixes the issue, but today after several hours switched off, it hit the error after the very first pass.

Could there be some issue with commands sent by the HMI?? Is there any interaction between FastRIP and the print head parking operation when a pass finishes?

The mystery continues!

 

[Support2012]

Double check the "pasteboard" size in FastArtist. It should be 45".
Look at the Home sensor and the Paper Length sensor.
When the Paper Length sensor is JUST OUT of the aluminum bar,
the metal "flag" for the Home sensor should be JUST IN the sensor.

The sensors have 3 wires. 2 for power, and 1 for signal. So a sensor may APPEAR to be functioning,
when it is actually NOT functioning. I always had a spare "test sensor" for troubleshooting
issues as dirt/wiring (the sensor wires are VERY THIN and can break free if the crimp on the
paper length sensor was bad-again, these were all done by hand).
The home sensor goes to the "junction block", the white rectangular piece screwed to the metal
frame. Follow the sensor wire to there. Unscrew and reseat the end wires. This was always an
issue which I flagged for improvement upon, but we all know what happened at the end-
US Screen went out of business. I would check EVERY wire on that junction block-there could be
a loose connection not from the sensor, but from where it goes to the DC Board.

You mentioned the motor "chattering" as I called it. On the DC Board, there is 2 lights, labeled A and B.
A means it is moving to index, B means it is moving to home (or vice versa-but that's what they indicate)
During normal operation, when printing, they both flicker (keeping accurate information from the RIP
as related to reading the encoder wheel on the motor). SOME, very few Pro machines, had an issue
with what the Electrical Engineer called a "ground Loop" issue. Some machines worked with a ground,
some did not. The ground wire in question is the one from the DC Board to the Epson Main Board Frame.
You have like 4 screws on the top, and 2 on the facing edge when you access the main board. There normally should be a ground wire screwed on one of the top screws. Look at that.

The DC board tells you a lot about troubleshooting. There is a 5v and 12v light-these come on
when you turn on the Power Breaker Switch. If you have a power related issue, you will see it here.

There is a light called "Auto". This light is ON when the DC Board is controlling things (start-up, moving
the bed to and from, etc.). This light is OFF when the DC Board hands control over to the Epson
main board for printing. Very useful when looking for a fault somewhere-who's fault is it?
US Screen components, or Epson components. Cut's your troubleshooting in half right off the bat.

Slow down the DC Board. If it's too speedy, it can cause confusion between Epson/US Screen components.
On the DC Board, there is a square blue box with a white screw in it, labeled "Slew Rate".
3 full turns counterclockwise to slow it down a bit.
I quizzed both the Mechanical/Electrical Engineers about this, and the reasoning was early machines
had severe issues with binding. And, since every machine was different, some just needed
more "juice" to overcome this issue.

You have machine #193 out of approx. 325 produced. Your machine has all the updates/changes
I instituted since I took over QC on machine #43.

Make sure it runs smooth both to index and home (if it slows down audibly, you have binding).
If that is happening, let me know, a change I made eliminated this issue, and your's has it.

Michael

 

[Sunro]

Update #2 ... sorry for all the postings, but those who know how the 4880 really works need all the information they can get.

I've discovered something interesting ... if I wiggle the rotating bar *sideways* while the printer is returning Home, the error goes away. Looking in next to the CMYK tanks, I can see the sensor's actuator arm move sideways a tiny bit.

Is it possible the sensor has become defective? Where would I buy a replacement?

It looks like a nasty job getting in there to replace it, but my current suspicion is that it may be the problem. I may also try to adjust the position of the sensor or bend the actuator arm a tiny amount to see if that makes a difference. I'll try to scope the output leads to see what voltage change there is when the bar rotates, but that won't be easy either. I suspect the sensor contains an open-collector Hall-effect IC, but that's just a guess.

By the way, the spring that pulls the rotating bar down into its normal position in the slot seems fine, and the bar rotates easily when I turn it by hand.

 

[Sunro]

Hey Michael, I missed your reply before I posted update #2. My apologies.

The information in your last posting is worth its weight in gold. It's the sort of stuff I love to know, and I'll explore each item. I'll tackle the possibility it's the sensor first, since I'd love to know if there's noise or instability on its output.

I just wish Epson had left a bit more room inside the printer to allow me to get at things more easily. But then who in his right mind would poke around like I do?

I was aware of that ground wire from the DC board back to the Epson chassis, and had replaced a badly-crimped ring on the end of the wire. I always make sure it's in place when reassembling. I had checked the white terminal block that carries sensor signals and found a couple of loose wires a year or so ago. Some of those wires are fragile. I installed a few extra cable-tie pads and insulating strips in miscellaneous places to avoid potential problems caused by chafing under vibration.

I'm not aware of any binding, and can hear no evidence of the motor straining. Once in a while the printer doesn't quite make it to the fine-tuned Index position (when it creeps up to its final location), but keeping the rails clean and slippery seems to cure that. Does the slew rate potentiometer affect that too?

Chuck

 

[Support2012]

I just wish Epson had left a bit more room inside the printer to allow me to get at things more easily. But then who in his right mind would poke around like I do?

I did for 2 years, LOL

Yes, you are binding. Here is what is going on: Print command sent from the RIP. Push the buttons,
and the DC Board moves to the front sensor, full speed; enters it; backs up at 1/2 speed until it
is out of the sensor; then moves in at 1/4 speed for an accurate starting point; DC Board
then turns control to the Epson Mainboard and starts it's clicking/whirring and begins to print.

Early on, the lead screw at the front was "slotted" because of binding issues. They persisted.
The frame of the printer we discovered had NO QC from our supplier-it bowed outward
(causing binding on the rails). We then checked for that. The Aluminum Platen the printer sits on
sometimes was not "flat" itself, causing stress on the "rail riders". I had a printer that would do
NOTHING but bind. I literally stared at it for an hour, looking and listening for something, thinking to
myself "talk to me and tell me what's up". I then noticed the printer platen was bowing by 1mm!!
Sent it back to assembly and told them to take it apart. Sure enough, it was not flat. Had them
replace it with another one, got it back and it ran like a champ!

Back to the Lead Screw-like I said, the front holder is slotted, to adjust for binding. However, the
back plate which has the motor/rear end of the lead screw attached to the frame was not slotted.
I told the Mechanical Engineer to go and slot 3 of those plates for me to test. Perfect. Never had
any issue with binding from that point on. I received new machines with BOTH plates loose,
and it was my job to "fine tune" them as part of QC (these machines also took a beating during
shipping, and this procedure should have been implemented as part of the install).

Loosen both plates (the rear one has some difficult-to-reach allen screws. an angled ratchet
makes it easy). If you want to try this, UNPLUG IT! The power cord is right where you will be snaking
your arm in, and when you get zapped, you can't just yank your arm out!! I know!!

Go to Manual on the HMI. Cycle it to Index, home approx 6 times to let the plates adjust.
Go to index. (may have to push it back a bit) and tighten. Back to home. Unplug. Tighten.
Machine #125 and on has slotted back brackets.

There are other things which can cause this (the back end of the lead screw, there is a nut with a set
screw on it, if it worked loose will cause this, but I was keen to keep an eye on that).

There is set screws all over these machines. They may come loose (even though we used Loctite,
but not the cement type as adjustments may need to be made in the field).

Best of luck to you Chuck

Michael

 

[Sunro]

Thanks again Michael, and thanks for the PM! My business partner and I are impressed.

For those who may be following my boring problem ... We've narrowed it down to the little sensor at the CMYK-end of the rotating bar (anyone know the proper name of that do-nothing bar?). It's too bad we can't just rip the thing out and toss it, but the firmware needs to see signals from the sensor even though the DTG mods don't need the bar.

After a print pass starts, we gently wiggle the bar sideways and rotate it a few degrees in it's normal direction. That eliminates the error. So my suspicion is that the sensor is out of adjustment just enough to be unstable ... perhaps its little white actuator arm is bent enough to cause it to sometimes not quite hold the signal.

At some point I'll work up the courage to get in there, remove the sensor and see what I can do with it. It's not a mechanical microswitch as far as I can tell, but that isn't confirmed. If worse comes to worst, I could replace it with a microswitch but I'd rather use a proper replacement if I could find one.

Chuck

 

[rowdy moose]

Ive never worked on that specific printer but I have worked on other 4800 based machines. I have seen a problem where, due to ink build up, the planetary gear (little gear on the end of an arm that pivots around a larger gear) on right side does not move into its proper position. This is the gear that is responsible for engaging and spinning the u shaped bar. Its worth checking out. Its directly under the spit station. Maybe after it errors out look and see where that planetary gear is.

I could be way off. It usually pops up a different code for that problem.

 

[Sunro]

Thanks for your message 'Rowdy'!

That's one problem I had considered, but not long ago when I installed a new capping station I cleaned all the gunk off the gears in that area, including the little planetary gear lever, thinking it might cause a problem in the future.

It's not easy getting dried ink out of that area, but a good dentist tool and lots of patience does the trick. Yesterday I looked in at those gears from a different angle, by removing tank #5. I can see a bit of dried ink I missed, so I'll scrape that out next time we shut down for a while.

The strange part of the problem is that the printer never gets far enough to even try to rotate the bar (i.e. the motor never starts), so it's unlikely to be the gear train.

I was looking for a second switch at the white-tank end of the rotating bar which had been mentioned, but there's nothing there except the planetary lever (which does move quite freely). Still, it's worth a good clean anyway.

Today the printer has been behaving properly doing a significant number of shirts, so for the moment we're back in business. Very strange. I really hope I can find the cause so I can share it with the Forum.

Chuck