Trotec Speedy 400 issue

[Scott Watson84]

We have a 5 year old Speedy 400 that is having an odd issue that has both Trotec and myself stumped, I'm hoping someone here might have had a similar issue and can point us in the right direction.

When we are raster engraving, the engraving will randomly shift to the left or right by a small amount, it tends to happen more often when engraving large sheets. Trotec has so far replaced both x and y axis motors, all logic boards, x axis gantry. They even took the machine back to their office for 3 weeks and gave us a loaner to use. They claimed they fixed the issue but it's now come back.

Trotec has now said they can't think of what it could be, pretty much every part on this machine is brand new now. I have Trocare on the machine thankfully, but its no good if they can't actually fix the machine.

Has anyone had similar issues?

[Kev Williams]

I believe your machine has servo motors, if so: Is the encoder and/or its reader brand new? Not sure exactly how a Trotec's encoder works, but seems all types work via hall-effect sensors, and they require specific air-gap spacing between the sensor and what the sensor is reading...

[Scott Watson84]

The tech mentioned the encoder strip is built into the motors and was replaced with the motors, he came out again and cleaned the encoder just be be safe, still no change.

Encoder was my first thought as well as it's similar behavior to our large format printer when the encoder gets dirty, but they assure me that is not the case here.

[Kev Williams]

if the encoder is built into the motors then the 'strips' are 'disks', like those on my bought-used, made-in-taiwan, GCC aka Pinnacle Explorer. Shortly after I got it I had lettering shifting, mostly to the left. I removed the X servo motor and opened it up--
- the disk passes thru the 'reader'--
be2.jpg

--pretty filthy! the reader detects the grooved 'hash marks',
counts and remembers them--
be3.jpg

Problem is, the marks are filled with crap, keeping the
grooves from being read...
be4.jpg

After I cleaned it up, fully transparent-
be6.jpg

you can barely make out the hash marks now, but the READER can! :_
be7.jpg

--For the reader to 'see' the hash marks, it must be located a fairly precise distance from the disk. If your replacement motors included the new reader and disk, then the reader-to-disk gap spacing likely isn't the issue...

Next issue likely then: Bad connection(s) somewhere. You state all the 'logic boards' have been replaced, which didn't help. Drilling down from here then, the next likely culprit would be one of the connection points FROM and TO all the new parts: somewhere, likely a single wire isn't making a good, full connection. Could be a dirty or otherwise 'compromised' male or female pin on a connector cable. Or possibly a messed up wire for whatever reason. TWO of my four C02 engravers have been thru this:
My big Triumph, the X axis stepper motor wiring suffered a break within the plastic 'drag chain', which would loose connection when that section of the wiring would loop into the chain as the Y gantry moved down past the halfway point. This is what that wire looked like once I extracted the wires from the chain:
DSC04998.jpg
-I repaired it, and it's been fine ever since (thankfully!)

And this problem isn't limited to cheap Chinese machines, basically the same thing happened to my France-built Gravograph LS900 laser:
9wire2.jpg
This wire, even fully encased within the drag chain, somehow the insulation wore to the point the bare wire eventually exposed started making contact with the machine's housing...

And shortly after I got my first Fiber laser, it started engraving erratically,
check out the upper "States" compared to the lower one--
DSC05779.jpg
--this was due to a wire on the plug connecting the control board to the scan head having a bad solder connection. After I repaired it, it never messed up again (although Triumph insisted to replace the scanhead under warranty)

I can go back clear to the early 1980's when I had to tear the Daughter Board out of the Apple IIe computer that ran my very first computerized engraver, about every 3 months, and pull nearly every IC chip I COULD pull off the circuit board and razor-blade the carbon off the pins of the IC chips-! I can say with no hesitation that in my experience with computer controlled devices since 1981, nearly EVERY issue I've EVER had with a machine not running properly was due to a faulty electrical connection of some kind. And the flip side of this coin is, I've actually had very few problems with my machines.

ANYWAY-- -- if everything is indeed newly replaced within your Trotec, then the problem has to be something that HASN'T been replaced, like all the original wiring and its connectors...

Good luck!

[Grant Carson]

We have a 5 year old Speedy 400 that is having an odd issue that has both Trotec and myself stumped, I'm hoping someone here might have had a similar issue and can point us in the right direction.

When we are raster engraving, the engraving will randomly shift to the left or right by a small amount, it tends to happen more often when engraving large sheets. Trotec has so far replaced both x and y axis motors, all logic boards, x axis gantry. They even took the machine back to their office for 3 weeks and gave us a loaner to use. They claimed they fixed the issue but it's now come back.

Trotec has now said they can't think of what it could be, pretty much every part on this machine is brand new now. I have Trocare on the machine thankfully, but its no good if they can't actually fix the machine.

Has anyone had similar issues?

We just went through a similar issue with two of our 300's. In both cases, the x belt just needed tightened up a bit. I don't there there is a real spec for that (at least that I know of) so just use your best judgement.

[Chase Williams]

I’m going to lean on it being a loose X axis belt as well. It should be tight enough that there is tension but loose enough that if you poke the belt it should give a little but there should be tension. If it’s not that I’d make sure the firmware was up to date. I’m assuming it’s on any file vs one specific file. I’ve had issues in Ruby where if there are layers underneath where it will hit them even if the top layer is white. Other than that id say loose connection somewhere but I find that doubtful. I guess could be the control board for X axis motor too.