Need help please

[Beth Page]

We have a Pinnacle M II Series laser engraver, and we had just got done doing a mirror and the laser went to its home position. sent another picture to the laser and pressed start and it said X motor malfunction call tech support. Has anyone had this happen before if so do you know how i can fix it or do i need to call tech support on monday?


PS. This is my first post

[William Johanson]

Beth try to run again at a slower speed. This happened to me once and it turned out the belt had loosened or stretched a bit. I could run at slow speeds but would get this error when I went to higher speeds. All it took was a belt adjustment and I was back in business. I still do not run at 100% speed very often. I have been told by support that it is perfectly fine to do so But I still prefer to run at 70 or 80 %.

Bill

[Richard Rumancik]

Beth, did you turn the laser off and back on again? If the laser carriage senses any resistance to motion (like bumping into something on the table) you could get this error. If you get it a second time after rebooting the laser, then it has detected a problem and it may be something more serious. Check that the plug on the x motor is secure (unplug and replug.) Can you move the carriage from one end to the other (x direction) freely? If you feel resistance or roughness you may have a bad bearing in the x-motor. The x-motor takes a lot of abuse during rastering due to the rapid back-and-forth motion.

Other than that, I can't think of something else to try before calling for guidance from tech support.

[Beth Page]

Yes i restarted the machine twice and that didn't work, and we also checked all of the connections going to the motor and they all seem to be fine. So i think we will have to contact tech support first thing in the morning

[Richard Rumancik]

Beth, you didn't say if the carriage moves freely when you push the carriage left to right. Make sure the rails are clean and everything is free. Does the motor seem to be completely dead now or does it move and then show x-motor failure? Move the carriage to the middle, and restart the machine. Does it just stay there and give the message, or does it "zero" first? If there is any life at all in the motor then it might not be the motor itself. (Note that the encoder is attached to the motor and is one assembly. If the encoder fails, the laser loses feedback and displays x-motor failure.)

In my file I found a page from LaserPro Mercury for x-motor problems. It might be similar for yours.

Step 2 asks to check that the flat cable is defective. You could probably do this with an ohmmeter but I am not beside my laser so can't say how hard this is to do.

In step 3 they mention a PCB attached to the motor. I can't remember what this looks like but it might just be an adapter PCB going from motor wiring to flex wiring.

Unfortunately they don't have a procedure here to determine between X-motor and mainboard failure. It suggests changing x-motor but if that didn't resolve it, it must be the mainboard. But the x-motor is over $250.00 so I think you want them to help you find out which one it is.

If it is under warranty they will probably send you a flat cable, PCB, then x-motor, then mainboard in that order till it starts working.

Let us know what they say . . .

[Richard Rumancik]

Just thought of one more thing. If this machine is like the Mercury version then you probably have what GCC calls "the hidden diagnostic procedure". Do you have info on this? If not I can send you a couple pages. To get to the diagnostic procedure on the Mercury, you hold down the START/STOP & the PAUSE buttons on the control panel simultaneously, and THEN turn on the main power switch. It will enter a special mode and indicate this on the control panel. Then you have to use the function key and < > keys to scroll through the menus to select what you want to test. (RAM, motors, laser source, etc.) If you need this let me know or else ask your dealer about it.

[Beth Page]

Talked to tech support this morning and we wnet through everything that we could and concluded that it was a bad x-motor so they are sending us a new one. I thank everyone for their help/suggestions. Thank you all agian.

[Rodne Gold]

Here's something one should consider , the motors of the GCC machines initially had a sort of design fault.
The plastic dust cap protecting the shaft encoder disc was not sealed adequately on some earlier models , ie the dust cap let debris in and this settled on the encoder disc and gave rise to this problem.
When you get the new motor , seal the dust cap to motor body interface with masking tape if it isnt already done.
Same with the Y motor if it fails.
Its relatively easy to repair a motor if this happens , pry off the dust cap and slide it off (it slides in a groove in the body) and with a gentle motion brush the disc and reader with a soft artists brush to dislodge dust and then blow gently with clean canned air , reassemble and clean and seal.

[Richard Rumancik]

Its relatively easy to repair a motor if this happens , pry off the dust cap and slide it off (it slides in a groove in the body) and with a gentle motion brush the disc and reader with a soft artists brush to dislodge dust and then blow gently with clean canned air , reassemble and clean and seal.

Beth, Rodne has a good point. While you are waiting for the new motor why not give it a try? You can't use your laser at the moment anyway. From what I recall you will have to take off the whole top of the laser to access the x-motor. That means removing all the screws all around the the top/lid/control panel assembly and disconnecting the control panel harness. Once you move the top part of the enclosure out of the way, you can access the motor. Get them to e-mail you full instructions if you don't have them.

Maybe you can clean the encoder disk without even removing the motor; I'm not sure. The x-motor stands vertically with the encoder on top under the plastic cap. The encoder disk itself is delicate so work carefully.

If you get it working, you can put the new one on and keep the old one as a spare. Good to have a spare, as the x-motor takes more abuse than the y-motor if you do any rastering. Wouldn't take much extra time to try it.