Description of Issue
Broken or stripped X drive gears will be evident when the board stops moving through the machine when it is commanded. Usually, this stoppage will be accompanied by a grating noise from the X- gear enclosure on the right side of the machine. Once the gears are broken or stripped they will have to be replaced. But before replacing them and running the machine, it is imperative that the root cause be determined so that it does not happen again immediately.
Possible Causes
Broken X-drive gears can result from excessive head pressure, rolled up sandpaper belts, a wedged board, a board that has a significant thickness taper to it, a gear set that has too much slop in it, a slow running cut motor, or a gear set that is out of alignment.
Troubleshooting Steps
- On older machines with sandpaper belts, check to see that the sandpaper belts are not rolled up. This will have the same effect as the varying thickness board.
- Check to see that the board you were carving was not wedged in the machine (it will wedge if the width of the board varies significantly along its length). Do this by slightly cranking up the head and moving the board in and out of the machine along its length looking to see if it wedges between the squaring plate and the sliding plate.
- Check to see that the board you were carving does not vary in thickness over its length. If it does it will wedge between the upper compression rollers and the belt drives and overload the X gears.
- Check that the head pressure is between 75 to 85 lbs. If the head pressure is lower than 75 lbs or higher than 85 lbs, it could well make the x-gears to stripe or brake. Please see the “Checking the Head Pressure” document on the CarveWright website for continued troubleshooting of this issue.
- Check the spacing of the metal gear on the X belt drives. When the machine is apart to replace the X gears make sure that the spacing on the metal drive gear attached to the belt tray roller is correctly spaced out from the end of the tray. You can see instructions for checking this in the document titled “Replacing the Sandpaper Drive Belts”. In place of the spacer mentioned in that document use a stacked penny and dime.
- Verify that the cut motor is not getting bogged down or stopping during the project. If the bit is not cutting it will cause increased force on the gears.
- If none of the above steps solves the issue consult with CarveWright Service.