How to identify my Bizhub C203 problem?

[AVW]

Well, the sound does not stop, when I put out any tray. I belive (but I am not sure), that the sound comes near from the gears of the fusing unit.

I hope it is the fuser, but I need your help. Remember, the sound appeared first, while printing, and pringing still worked well, even if the sound is there.

I put out the fuser right now, and tried to check the gears. As I have no experiance with them, here is a picture that you can see for yourselve:

fusergears1.JPG

The gear wheels work well. Only the huge black one cannot be moved, because of that half gear inside. If I move it by hand, and use enough force so that it "moves over" the teeths of that half gear wheel inside, the sound is similar to what I hear when the machine is on and the fuser is installed.

But I do not understand the mechanism. What is the huge black gear from the fusing units right side for? And especially what does that "half gear wheel" inside?

fusergears2.JPG


And finally here is a picture from the gears for the fusing unit from inside the copier. I cannot tell if they look like they should? Regarding the two brown ones, the one in the front can be moved by hand, the other one in the back not at all. Both have a kind of lubricating grease on them.


gears.JPG

Is there perhaps a possibility to turn the copier on completely to see if the sound is gone without the fusing unit installed? So I could see if my theory is right an if it really is the fusing unit, or the waste toner system or something else. Or is it impossible to trick out the sensors?

[Synthohol]

the half moon gear is to engage the pressure between the 2 rollers, it does not turn all the way.
one other thing, with the fuser back in, while it makes the noise push the side door in tighter to see if it stops the noise.

[blackcat4866]

I have a suggestion.

If all the other choices just seem too hard, just pick something randomly that you know how to do, and say that is the problem. Go ahead and ignore the advice of the other people that suggested HARD things. I know many technicians that use this methodology. You never actually fix the problem, but then you never have to admit that you don't understand the advice. =^..^=

[AVW]

one other thing, with the fuser back in, while it makes the noise push the side door in tighter to see if it stops the noise.

That was the first thing we tried, before I did the first posting here. It does not stop the noise.

[copyman]

Can't say I blame you for trying everything possible before having to deal with the waste toner pipe clog. Have you tried running machine with rear cage "hanging" away from machine. You can unhook the cage and that should give you enough room to look with flashlight to see if you see any gears jumping. Or at least pinpoint the area where noise is coming from. If I'm not mistaken the noise for waste toner clog is on right side (standing in back of machine) and all the drive stuff is toward the left.

Fortunately I have never had do that repair. Heard about it a being the worst type of repair on that series. I thought the Transfer belt sensor & laser unit were tough repairs, but heard this was much worse!

I had around 100 in the field at one time and never had one machine with the clogged waste pipe. Probably just jinxed myself but I only have around 20 left. If it does happen I won't attempt the repair. Now that they are "end of life" status I will just upgrade the machine.

best of luck

[allan]

Could be the main drive?

Fun thing is this machine makes it easy to run / stabilize with the side door open.

[habik]

Hi hope you are well.

If the machine is doing it on occasion or lightly..then you maybe still in luck (temporarily until the gears give away completely) and the lumps of toner can be sucked out from the auger from top of the machine when the left hand side cover and the top tray are removed. You will need a mirror, flashlight and vacuume cleaner with narrow nozzle to put it inside the toner delivery augers top cups. Inside it is a spring to agitate the toner so it doesn't create lumps( well its a ot easier to give the cartridge a prolong shaking to keep the toner in dust form. anyway:

Open the front door an dremove all toners and Imaging Units and Waste box. Open right hand side door and remove the transfer belt (two screws securing the silver locking plates). Now try and turn the drive gear with hand towards you. If you start getting that noise then ask someone to turn the belt drive gear whilst you start vacuming the waste pipe. (Pain to get to all holes Item 9 x4 and the waste port for the waste box item 18 x1 on the parts catalog page) If you think you cleaned it then clean the toner hoppers as well.

Shine the light from the the top of where the the toners are and in line of your sight and angle it with mirror to see whats happening whilst you vacuuming the toner hopper . Now you'll need someone to keep turning that drive of Transfer belt as all that is driven by the same drive mechanism. Keep doing it unit you don't hear that skipping of the gears.

Now I don't recall if the drive ubnit was OUT of the machine whilst I was turning the Transfer Belt or not..Sorry..I just really don't remember. Try it. You'll notice how difficult it is. I was able to turn it by hand.

Let us know if you can turn it by hand. Good luck.

Kind Regards,

[AVW]

you maybe still in luck (temporarily until the gears give away completely) and the lumps of toner can be sucked out from the auger from top of the machine when the left hand side cover and the top tray are removed. You will need a mirror, flashlight and vacuume cleaner with narrow nozzle to put it inside the toner delivery augers top cups. Inside it is a spring to agitate the toner so it doesn't create lumps( well its a ot easier to give the cartridge a prolong shaking to keep the toner in dust form. anyway:

Hi habik!

Two weeks ago we had all suggested parts together (nozzele, mirror, ...) and for the first time enough time to care about our 203.
We followed your advice, and vacuumed the augers from above (and the wastte toner system). As we could not move the transfer gear more than one round we gave up at that point. Last week we started to take apart the machine, and tried vacuuming everything again.
At the moment the PWB box, HV unit and Transport Motor are out.

The interresting part is, that all augers are empty and look very clean now. The spring inside the augers is working well at all colours! I cannot move the gear system by hand as it would need too much force. So I moved the Transport Motor by hand. I can always move it for about 20 rounds (about 1 round at the transfer belt gear), before the noise starts and the gears are overrunning. The sound comes definitely from somewhere behind or "inside" the Transport Drive Unit.
All (!) the gears at the right side (when I look at the back of the machine), means waste toner gears, auger system gears, are not moving when the overrunning and the sound happens after about 20 rounds of the Transport Motor (while they move well in both directions, for that 20 rounds of the motor). That means that the overrunning does not happen there.
So when I move the Transport Motor back, for again 20 rounds, the augers do not move. But the overrunning happens in the other direction as well then. Moving the motor again the augers move again, in the right direction (what makes sense to me as we do not like to transport toner back into the toner box *g*). We did it for sure 60 times, that means the augers seem to be really empty.

My next step will be to take out the transport drive unit and have a closer look. If I need to get out the augers completely one day, the transport drive unit needs to go out as well anyways

For others who may wonder again (or recognize that I am partially using wrong terms or do not get everything immediatly), I am not a technician. We are driving a non commercial place for printing in our city, in our spare time, so I am more the "interrested end user". And as we do not have money (but time), we need to try our best to fix the machines on our own.