Background

Sources of carriage vibration or binding

• Incorrect drum belt tension: Check if it is too tight or too loose, and that the drum motor is square.
• Lack of device maintenance: Check for signs of wear. Also check that there is enough grease or lubricant on the carriage tracks, ball nut and ball screw, and so on . Check that the set screws that attach the flex tube to the ball screw are secure.
• Broken, loose, or worn cables: Replace or repair as needed.
• Carriage flex track: Verify that the flex track carrying the head wiring and cooling lines is not a source of carriage binding.
• Refer to the appropriate Preventative Maintenance Checklist for more information.

Sources of high-speed vibration

At higher drum speeds, edge detection errors may occur, along with smaller than expected images, partially overwritten swaths, or subtle subscan oscillations.

To determine if high speed vibrations are the source of the problem, try running the TSC News device at a lower drum speed and reduce the laser power to maintain the correct exposure.

Sources of low-speed vibration

When the drum and carriage operate at low speeds, vibrations (also know as jitter) can occur.

To make the jitter easily visible, inspect the 50% checkerboard swath boundaries for uniformity using a loupe with 100x magnification. Possible causes of jitter are:

• Low speed carriage vibrations can cause subtle oscillations in the focus system, which can cause 0.8 pixel magnification oscillations.
• Severe engine vibrations can cause intermittent carriage jitter, which causes a 1-3 pixel gap and/or overlap at the ends of the imaging swath in the subscan direction.

Date submitted

21 Nov 2005