Heidelberg Gripper arms not picking up paper

Hi Everyone, I wonder if someone has experience helping me troubleshoot the issue with my gripper arms. In the middle of a print run today, one of my gripper arms stopped dropped the paper too soon and the paper was shy of the side gauge by about 1/2-3/4 inch. We always run jobs with lay gauges and the lay bar appears to be functioning fine. While troubleshooting it, the second lay gauge also intermittently ‘dropped the paper’ too soon. We’ve been printing on the same paper, the same set up for years (greeting cards). As with most of these old presses, my presses stump me every month or so with a new issue and this is new to me. For the life of me, I can not seem to do anything to make it work properly. The gripper seems to be closing at the correct time when I slow the press way down and run one sheet through at a time but when I try to run the job again, the paper gets dropped by one or both of the arms. Super frustrating and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

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Sometimes you can see things not obvious by taking a video in of the press at full speed, but…..take the video in slow motion mode (on an iphone it is called slo-mo), when you play it back you can see the press running full speed in slow motion, you may be able to see exactly what is happening, or what is not happening. I have used this a couple times and have seen what you could never see at full speed, which can be a great help when the problem is very subtle. Just a thought. GOOD LUCK!

Thanks Gilman. That’s a great idea. I will try that now.
Jenn

Perhaps try adding some tape to the inside of the gripper to add some additional friction and grip.

Gilman’s comment about the slo-mo video is awesome. I need to try that tomorrow!