Ricoh DD4450 false "add ink"

[Polarbear]

I have set up and installed 2 of these in the past 3 months, and both have in recent weeks called in with "add ink"

It seems that they don't like standing as this was shortly after the new school year started.

Has anyone else come across this?

The problem is that the ink supply path has changed, so that it is not straight into the drum as before, but around a corner, so one cannot (like in the past) insert a long screwdriver to clear the ink path.

Any ideas??

[Polarbear]

I have set up and installed 2 of these in the past 3 months, and both have in recent weeks called in with "add ink"

It seems that they don't like standing as this was shortly after the new school year started.

Has anyone else come across this?

The problem is that the ink supply path has changed, so that it is not straight into the drum as before, but around a corner, so one cannot (like in the past) insert a long screwdriver to clear the ink path.

Any ideas??

We had done a thorough inspection of the drum unit, which included a dismantling of the drum unit, and discovered a crack on the ink cassette spout. We have now replaced the ink cassette and will test to see if this had had an effect on the ink supply, as there is no apparent other cause at this stage.

[Iowatech]

I've seen something similar on the Riso RN line, but they have an ink tube between the pump and the drum that breaks more often. And then they spew a pile of ink on the drum connectors. Sorry I didn't pipe up earlier, I don't have any experience on the Ricoh duplicators and haven't seen anything here that would indicate they have that problem.
Still, looks like you inspected the ink tubes, so that probably wouldn't have helped anyway.
Here's a weird one that started when Riso began putting RFID chips on their ink bottles. The RFID chip keeps track of how long the ink pump runs, and after so long the chip tells the machine the bottle is empty. Problem is, it can't tell whether the pump is moving ink or air, and in the beginning people who stored the ink bottles cap up were getting a lot of air in them. So some machines would reject ink bottles then that had one or two inches of ink still in them for no apparent reason. Probably not of use in your situation, but just in case.