400ci - Excessive waste toner production

[BHRLC]

A church's machine is producing more than the usual of waste toner.
Their output is high, as they print many different types of documents.
What would be some things to check first?

I was also curious how the machine senses how much waste toner is in the dispenser bottle?
Thanks all

[blackcat4866]

There's a wide necked photointerruper across the neck of the bottle. There are two pockets in the neck of the bottle that do not fill with toner until it reaches the top.

How did you come to this conclusion, that there is too much waste toner? Did the customer tell you? (It's not a good idea to hand over the diagnostics to the enduser.) Are they running out of bottles? I doubt it.

The proportion of waste toner to toner used remains the same all the time. So a large amount of waste toner can mean high volume or heavy fill. Neither of which is necessarily a problem. Or the developer could be overtoned.

So convince me why there is something to fix. =^..^=

[BHRLC]

Well... I'm the "new guy" in our 3-man outfit, with really only my one other coworker
to do the grunt work. I was told by him that this was the case...
From what I gathered, they are going through more than the normal amount of waste
toner bottles, even though they are still high volume.

If the developer is overtoned, what does this mean and how to fix?

It sounds like you got some great points and I'm eager to learn.
Thanks again

[blackcat4866]

And there are no image quality issues? I'm still not convinced that you've got a problem to fix.

If you've got $400 burning a hole in your pocket, you can run simulation U131 Auto (+/- 20 points from the reference value is considered normal). Overtoning will be represented by a very low value 90-120. The $400 is per developing unit, depending how many you decide to replace.

Personally, if there is no quality issue, the number of very small waste bottles is inconsequential. =^..^=

[CraiginAK]

I'm never convinced when someone says using too many unless bottles not filling completely then if that case may need clean sensor. Other than that its most certainly a product of what customer is running. I have machines out there always needing few extra bottles and some I go to have many extra bottles laying around. All my techs told pick up extra's if see lot sitting around we can always use and saves from us ever having buy them.

[Tonerkiller]

Clean the machine including all the charge rollers and update the firmware

[BHRLC]

Well that certainly clears it up for me then.
I assumed there might have been some possible condition or problem that would
produce excess toner, but I will keep the info in mind for future reference.
Maybe these guys are onto something different? - http://dnet-km.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/...11/m/831108592

@Tonerkiller - FW is only 1 revision behind, so it's pretty current. Not much was
fixed in the last release, per documentation.

Thanks again guys!

[Eric1968]

There are some customers that replace the waste toner box when they replace the toner, because it's in the toner package. Then they will run out of waste toner boxes.

Update the firmware to the latest version! There are various issues solved with the latest version. You won't find all issues in the documentation, but these machines run best when the firmware updated to the most recent version.

[Tonerkiller]

Well that certainly clears it up for me then.
I assumed there might have been some possible condition or problem that would
produce excess toner, but I will keep the info in mind for future reference.
Maybe these guys are onto something different? - http://dnet-km.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/...11/m/831108592

@Tonerkiller - FW is only 1 revision behind, so it's pretty current. Not much was
fixed in the last release, per documentation.

Thanks again guys!

That thread is over three years old. Actually one of those post was mine. We have not had this problem since then. Update FW clean charge rollers, machine and calibrate.