I was in the middle of a 6 hour carve when the tool holder dropped out of the spindle. I had just upgraded it and the entire Carvetight had less than 5 hours of carve time on it. I talked with Carvewright support and they said they had never heard of that before and that likely the z-motor had an error and caused the bit to jam, resulting in the tool holder becoming dislodged. Their solution - another Carvtight, a replacement z-motor, and a new ribbon cable.

I tried to reinstall the tool holder and was able to press it mostly back in place - to the point of engaging the drive cable. I suspect that if I had a way of pressing it back into place that I could make the Carvetight operational again. It almost seems that the tool holder diameter is out of spec, allowing it to fall out of the spindle. If it were pressed in correctly and tightly, it would not have fell out. There was no evidence of the tool getting jammed nor was there damage to the 1/32 bit.

Since the z-motor has never give me a problem before and there really isn't that many total hours on the entire machine, I wanted to ask this group -- does it seem reasonable that the z-motor has gone bad? Does anyone know a way to test the motor?

Thanks for any suggestions!

Rob