Obstruction Troubleshooting
Use these initial steps to find the cause of obstructions:
- STEP #1:
- When the machine stops with the obstruction, the motors are still engaged and in hold mode.
- Don't touch any buttons, but try to move the arm left/right and forward/back to feel the resistance.
- If you feel slipping in one direction, the motor engagement of that motor needs increasing.
- STEP #2:
- If you feel that a motor is rolling with relatively low resistance, go to Utilities and start Clean Rollers.
- Check if the drive wheel of the motor is turning. If not, post the finding on the Support Page.
- If yes, grab the moving roller and try to stop it. If you can stop the drive wheel using relatively low force post the finding on the Support Page.
- Touch "Reverse Motor Direction" and repeat the above.
- STEP #3:
- If the holding is OK, use the Back button and go to Realign Quilt.
- Select Manual Mode and move the machine around the location of obstruction, with a light touch, left/right, forward/back, looking for a pull in these directions.
- If you feel the pull, look for cables caught by the carriage or tangled with other cables. It may not be an IQ cable, but one of the quilting machine (the power cord is the most likely cause).
- Other things that can cause drag on the motors: hanging thread on the bottom, the bottom of the quilt riding on the top of the lower arm, thread wrapped around the sensor shaft or the machine's wheels.
- STEP #4:
- Inspect the drive wheels for cracked or detached rubber layer.
- If you have an O-ring on the sensor wheel, look for cracked or detached rubber.
- If you have a pivoting sensor bracket, lift the sensor wheel and feel whether it is pushed back by a spring. If not, check if the spring is snapped on the bracket.
- On SuperMotor V2 and V3, check if the head of the limiting screw sits about 1/10" above the mounting block, as shown on Fig. 3 of this document. If the gap is smaller, follow the procedure to realign and level the motor.
- STEP #5:
- Go to System->Interface Setup/Test.
- Start Communication Test.
- Move the machine around the location of the obstruction, left/right, forward/back, and watch the error messages on the bottom of the white screen. Report on the Support Page if you see any error, even if it just flashes.
- STEP #6:
- If the table or the carriage is not leveled, the IQ could go uphill at a certain area of the table, causing the obstruction detection. Same is the result when the table is sagging in the middle.
If the above steps did not help in finding the cause of obstructions, please save the logs (System->Copy Logs to USB) and post the "logs.tar.gz" file from your USB on the Support Page
Enter the results of the above steps in the Description of Problem window.