I picked up an untested GR drum off eBay a while back and have the sneaking suspicion that the ink pump might be broken. I gave it a full cleaning (the plan was to switch it from a one color to another) and put in a new bottle of ink, but the pump isn't pulling any ink from the tube through the ink pump.
My machine is an FR3950UI. Here's what I've done so far:
After completely cleaning the drum (squeegee unit, ink pump unit, screen... everything), I put on a confidential master and ran several hundred sheets through the machine, bypassing continual "replace ink tube" error messages along the way. No ink was on the screen so I pulled out the ink tube, peered into the drum, and noticed that no ink had made it out of the ink pump unit onto the squeegee roller. I dismantled the entire drum again to confirm that everything was correctly installed, all PC boards were plugged in, etc., and tried it all again. Same fate. I ran test mode 101 for a couple minutes, but still no ink. In a previous thread, some had commented on a "sound" they heard while running test mode 101—I assume it was the sound of the ink pump doing its thing—but I don't notice any sounds that can't be heard while in normal printing mode (for comparison's sake, I put in another working drum, ran test mode 101, and it sounded the same).
Questions:
Does this mean I have a dead ink pump on my hands?
Are there any other tests I can run to confirm that the problem is pump-related, as opposed to perhaps a sensor error?
Is it simply that the pump not priming?
Could it be something else that I'm missing?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Bookmarks