Hi.
I have a second hand MH721 that has a problem that I have seen mentioned here before.
My blade won't lift when cutting, but it won't press hard down on the vinyl either, so no vinyl gets cut, but lots of it gets destroyed since the blade gets dragged all over the vinyl, scratching it badly.
When the cutter is off the blade is up, but when I fire it up it goes down and it stays down (it used to bounce before the problem appeared, droping only momentarily). When I send test cuts to the plotter, the head lifts for milliseconds during the cut, but instead of staying up for the entire cross path, it drops down again and drags on the vinyl till the next cut point.
After reading some posts in this forum, I made sure the ground wiring is ok, so it left the Z-chip as the only possible broken part. The previous owner had already changed the motherboard once, so I removed the old Z-chip and tried it on, but nothing changed (bear in mind however that the old motherboard has been collecting dust since 2009 and it was faulty to begin with). I have located and removed the socket with the two cables that control the blade z-axis and the blade stayed up after turning the cutter on. I plugged it back in - and down it went....
The main problem is, I live in Greece and the situation here is far from great at the time. So, I would like help in two things. First, I've read about the 9V battery test that verifies the Z-chip problem. Can someone please elaborate on this - what exactly do I have to do to make sure that this is the problem and nothing else (can I identify if the carriage or the motherboard need replacement too)? Second, I tried to order a z-chip from uscutter - I can spare 5 bucks for trying to fix the machine - and a cutting strip since the old one is the original and is worn out, but the shipping cost for $15 worth of products is $89.72!!!
I am not the original owner so I cannot get a ticket from the uscutter support, so please, if anybody from the support team can offer any help, I'd be much oblidged. If not, I would love to pay some other forum member to buy a chip for me, put it in an envelope and ship it to me with plain post. I will pay for everything of course with paypal, or whatever needed.
I am not in the T-shirt or in the sign-making bussiness. I teach people (mostly young people) graphic design and photography in a community school in my hometown in Agria - Volos. The school is a non-profit organisation so I make no money from doing it - students pay only so we can have electricity and heat during the winter. Most of the equipment is mine, the rest provided by fellow citizens. Losing our cutter means that we cannot replace it since our resources are from limited to depleted.
Thanks in advance,
Philippos.
