Wobbly engraving

Hi everyone. My GF has been doing fine for a few months but has recently developed a wobble. Specifically in the left to right horizontal parts of engravings. I emailed support without any response yet but figured I’d ask here to see if I could get any other experience with this.

I took the carriage apart and the 4 black wheels that ride on the rail seem to be working fine. It could be that one of them behaves differently when the carriage is hanging from the railing as opposed to when I have the carriage off.

I took the drive belt off to rule it out. When the carriage is on the railing, it makes a bit of a rough vibration as it moves left and right. It’s the same no matter where on the rail it is moving, print tests result in the same wobble regardless. What I think is happening is that the vibration is causing the print head to shake a little, causing the wobble.

I’d like to put all new wheels on it to see if that solves the issue, but can’t find any outside of GF support and they’ve yet to respond, so I’m kinda stuck with a lot of orders to cancel. Any advice or experience with this is appreciated.

I would check your belt tension first. Someone else just reported something similar and belt tension fixed it. If you want to post pictures we can tell more easily.

You will have to wait on support for the parts.

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Thanks ben, I adjusted the belt tension twice and the result is still the same. Maybe the belt is too stretched, I can’t get it adjusted any tighter.

Picture, please?

If the wheels are rough I would look to have those run very smoothly. Is the rail also nice and smooth?

This is what a test cut looks like. Tried tightening the belt and it helped a little bit but theres still a clear wobble

Interesting that the wobble is more pronounced on the X axis. At least the way the part is oriented in the picture. Does that match with the axis that is rough?

Looks to me like one of the wheels that locks the head carriage plate to the gantry is deformed/off center. It would feel like it’s running smoothly, but cause the plate to wobble as it moves.

They are able to replace the carriage plate, so hopefully the pic will provide enough info for them to make that decision.

It might be useful to print a couple of plain “horizontal” lines (use the new trial 'shapes" option) and take a pic of the result, just to help reinforce what’s going on.

Thank you

Have you ensured that there is no dust or soot around any of the wheels? Looks like you got a spot with gunk on it.

I’ve had to clear gunk off the rails already a couple times. I would say it is that except it is repeating, and in that case it is probable the wheels.

Here’s another pic.

I see you’ve also emailed us and we’ve been working on this there, so I’m going to close this thread.