Doubling on Gear Side Guide

Hello all. As the thread title states, I have been experiencing some trouble with the gear side guide when running on that guide.

The machine is a 2002 LS, in pretty good shape. We can run all day long on the operator guide and have no issues, no fan out, no fit problems, nothing, runs very well print quality wise. The issue is running on the gear side guide. The side guides are the bearing and spring kind. I have the buckle plates set, lightest spring that will pull the sheets. Smoother bar is set properly, nothing dragging the sheet.

The problem occurs when we are backing up a job and have to run on the gear guide. The operator side of the sheets fans out, and doubles worse the further back on the sheet it goes. I have changed side guides with the same feeder set up, no doubling or fan out when pulling to the operator guide, doubles when pulling to the gear.

It shows up more with thinner paper of course, we run mostly 80# text, and it still shows up on 100# text. I have cleaned and set the swing arm grippers, there is nothing weird going on there. So I presume at the moment.

All the cam followers are greased and rolling with no issues, the A transfer grippers are set at 3, as well as the transfer cylinders. Nothing is binding the sheet as it registers.


I have not set the A transfer grippers, as I never had to set them before.

My question to you guys is this, what is the proper procedure for setting the A transfer grippers, and have any of you experienced this problem at one time or another? If so what was the issue causing the problem, and how did you fix it?

 

under the pull guide is a wheel that has a moon shaped rubber pad to grip the paper - if that is worn out it could mean trouble - have a look at it

 

No rubber pad, solid metal.

I believe I narrowed it down to the A transfer. I opened the gripper settings from 3 to 4, everything got worse, closed the gripper setting to 1, the lowest setting, and it got better, just not completely.


So does can anybody explain to me what the procedure for setting the A transfer grippers is?

 

Sometimes over thinking one problem can create another one. While I'm not saying it isn't a transfer gripper issue, I'm curious as to why the sheet would only have troubles when pulling from one side and not the other? You say you tried backing up the sheet using the Op side guide with no trouble but when you switch to the Drive side guide the problem appears? I'm not really sure how the transfer grippers would know the difference. If the problem truly occurs only when using one pull guide and not the other, I would guess that it has something to do with the sheet registering incorrectly before it enters the grippers.

 

I understand what you are trying to say, completely. I have been trying to work on this issue starting from the most obvious down. We had a mechanic come in and set the A transfer grippers Wednesday. The grippers were out of adjustment, but that was not the solution. According to him, everything we are doing is correct, it just slurs on the op side when backing up sheets. He left referring us to another mechanic. We are waiting on him to come in and see what he can do.

 

Wait, op side or drive (gear) side? Also, are these Komori Mechanics? If they are, who's already been there, and who did he refer you to?

 

Yes they were/are Komori mechanics. But I am not going to name drop. Not without asking them first.

 

Yeah I thought about that but just wanted to mention that while they're all quality mechanics, each one seems to have their own specific skill set. If you want you can PM me, but no big deal, just trying to help.

 

I completely agree. Hopefully this issue will be fixed soon.

 

Have you checked to see if side guide timing is different from the other side? I wonder if the side guide is still partially down as the paper feeds? Flap pressure on the front of the feed board at the grippers can also affect the sheet enough to cause issues as can the brush pressure on the back of the sheet.

 

Side guide timing is correct, as are the flaps/smoother bar and wheels. The brush wheels are white soft wheels for light stock. Everything is in check. Currently we are waiting for the other mechanic to come in.

 

A few years ago , I had the press set up to run at a standard size which we ordered most stock. I had found that I had several issues when changing weight of paper. My cure ended up being a result of moving my brushes and wheels to a different belt for different stock weight. Some stock I had to run wheels and brushes more towards the outside of stock, other I had to run more towards the center. I was a skeptic at first, but after running crazy for a few weeks, I was grabbing in the air just for ideas. This one fixed us up. Maybe it will work for your machine? For some machines simple things are a fix, for others you may have several things to adjust.

 

Yeah had a similar problem on a 840 turned out to be wear on the sidelay pull wheel as Meny said also it does seem like a sidelay reg problem anything else would show up on either lay

 

Well after a few months I have found the problem and resolved the issue. It would appear that the previous owners of the press wrecked the feeder at one point and changed a few grippers on the swing and the A transfer. I replaced the suspect grippers and all is well now. The odd point is that the grippers were set correctly as far as drag, but the style of gripper was wrong. The grippers that were replaced were smooth, they did not have the rough dimples that the other grippers on the press have. I replaced 2 on the swing and 3 on the A.[/url][/IMG]

 

I have had this situation occur to me. Their is a split shaft that runs from guide to guide right under the guides. It turns and your guide has a cam follower that runs on a cam to open and close. that shaft had broke the lock screw and rotated slightly. It caused the the guide to come down too early and give it a light pinch. You can easily check this by move to a small sheet size run the press on crawl and engage both guides and feel if the come up and down the same. Also might check the swing grippers adjustments.

 

looks like i'm not the only one with this problem...it happened to me twice same screw at the same unit...

 

mr. lignum can you please tell me which gripper tip you replaced? nurling one or plain one ?

 

I replaced the plain smooth grippers with the knurled grippers.

 

by the way.
how do you set your wheels & brushes on the feed board.
HD oriented printers tend to do it the HD way and that will not suit a Komori in meny cases....

 

It is set up the normal way, as per the instructions of the komori demonstrators, I move wheel around depending on the sheet size and weight obviously. I use the soft white nylon wheels mostly, we do not run board stock very often at all.