Bad B/W design..

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

They could really learn from the Kitchen Aid model. Their stand mixers with the bowls have been very similar since 1919. They pride themselves on the fact that a mixer from 1919 or from 2010 can all use the same attachments. I can attest to their worldwide reliability. I have one in my kitchen that was my grandmothers...it's older than me and still whips up cake, cookie dough, and frosting like it was new out of the box.

Now I know a mixer and a copier are very different, but the make it to break it philosophy needs to change. They should get one awesome design down and keep it and make it extremely reliable. Oh, but that will put the technicians out of business you say. Well I doubt it. There will still be maintenance, installs, deinstalls, upgrades, etc. Perhaps it will make our jobs easier. And if it means less technicians required, oh well, there's plenty of other fun things out there to do and at least we won't be fixing garbage.

Who knows, if people started getting real brand loyalty b/c of awesome quality, that might actually ensure more work for us and we won't have to work as hard trying to sell crappy crap to a customer. I found it interesting that all the women who have kitchen aid mixers typically end up buying one for their children, and so on and so on...it's like free marketing and easy sales...

[mrwho]

The "make it to break" philosophy doesn't work for me. If I buy something and it breaks shortly after the warranty expires, I avoid it like the plague and go to the competition instead. One example: HP USB flatbed scanners.

[banginbishop]

ALL m/c's are built to a price and that doesnt include how long an engineer takes to fix it. If the manufacture designed it for engineers then the cost would be passed to the end user. End user looks at the price against another brand and says its cheaper with brand x- why? because brand x built the m/c with price in mind, maximum profit not engineer freindly.

[Lotec]

Yeah, I agree about the quality here. I find it hard to believe that they can not make them better or last longer - or be more service friendly.

There is really difference between models too. I see Kyocera models that have a service interval at about 300K, and Ricoh models that have 90K. If you live in a country where man hours cost a lot - it is important to have longer service intervals. See the smaller b/w Ricoh MP 2500 series, and a Kyocera TaskAlfa 300i as an example.

If a machine starts to need to much service - we have to scrap it. We fill up those electronics recycling containers quite often. Even if they recycle it, it is not good for the environment.

Make it better so it lasts longer, and just make parts upgradeable. If there comes a new print controller, they should have the option to buy it - but keep the finisher, paperbanks, document feeder, large capasity trays and what not.

It would be easy for the manufacturer to be able to make the same parts year after year. It they think they could make it bettet they should make a swappable part (if that is a english word at all?).
They should just make a super advanced toner bottle that is really hard to duplicate so they keep the toner profit. They would also still sell spare parts. When things get old - they will fall apart once in a while. And don't forget the customers. They will mess up, and break stuff or do some othe stupid things that will result in a service call.

A friend of mine worked for a while as a tech, but started up a copy shop. For him it is a principle to keep stuff working as long as possible. Not just for the money, but like me he really enjoy to see the machines work longer and do more then they were designed for. He sets up print jobs so they will start late in the evening too - and he usually takes a trip to the shop at night to fill up with paper so the machine can continue working when he sleeps. By spreading the workload he can get really high production volume - and still have a fairly healthy machine with no drum fatigue.
And if you like to have a few technical challenges, a really hard working machine gives you some interesting problems once in a while. On the other hand... they usually work really well. Often better than machines that is used at 5-10 % of what it's supposed to handle.
I guess that the paper is always fresh. After all it will just stay in the tray for an hour or so. The users are more professional too - so they focus on PM messages in the display, and to buy a quality paper, and just treat the machine better.

I've studied mechatronics and physics and I see they have used some (too me) fairly advanced science behind a lot of the constructions. And then suddenly they have used some shitty material not right for the job at all - and I wonder if they failed material science at school.
Just yesterday I pulled a transferbelt from a HP printer apart - just to see how it was constructed. And I see a simple plastic bushing/clip combination for a charge roller, and thinks to myself: ahh that was a simple but clever construction. I would never have thought about that. But other times I see really lame constructions that either make things more complex and fidly then they need to be, or just plain dumb. Just think of all the major or minor problems that occur with a new model. They can not test them enough at the factory before they are released to customers.
It you line up 20 copiers, and have 10 techs and 10 customers copy 2-3 million pages on it - and see how it fails, how often and which parts that fail time and time again.. they have to learn something from this? They should also test the machines in differens temperatures and humidity levels.
Just thinking about the Ricoh MPC charge roller problem..
If it is so hard to make a roller that works.. just drop it. Use a charge corona wire and a ozone filter. The wire/grid and ozone filter could come with the toner bottle - so the dustomer could change them - or make them last longer and have a tech doing the job.
Or they could study why the Kyocera TaskAlfa machines works really well with charge rollers.
What happende to industrial espionage :-)
And why don't they stick with a good solid construction? I worked on an analogue Minolta that had a paper feed machanism (and rollers) that lastet about 1 million pages. I cleaned it if I was on a service call - but I never had to replace it. And then they released a new digital copier, with a new cheaper paper feed mechanism? and by far not as good.

If they want things to last a short period of time - make it into a user replaceable cartridge. And make the rest of the machines with big, solid and tech replaceable parts.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

Oh I hear you there and agree. I think it mostly comes down to profits. They want something cheap and disposable after a few years of use.

Now anyone that knows me knows I'm not the biggest fan of Xerox, but I will give credit where it is due. I loved the fact that for many many years, they made the toners mostly all the same in a series. So if you upgraded you could probably keep your old toners and parts. The toners were even the same for a large speed and volume range too. Now Xerox's position was probably that they wanted them to be that way b/c they can manufacturer them for cheaper and they sell direct on cpc programs so they didn't want customers throwing out their "old" Xerox toners and parts.

The reality is there are just too many dealers and too many manufacturers of these now commodity products. This has flooded the market and encouraged cheap and sh*tty quality. About the only really new innovation I see anymore is in the color arena. But even there it's not really innovative. So you made a color copier print 5 times as fast as before. Big f*ckin' deal. Or you made a b/w device that can now go tens of millions of pages. Who cares, that's how they should have been made to begin with.

[Stirton.M]

I see this "cheapness" on some consumable items with KM....well, practically every QMS product for certain, and a few of those C-XX countertop things....complete garbage all of them. Thankfully I work on the large production lines more than the little guys...otherwise, I might go postal on those machines whenever I saw them.

Changing an OACB board in a C65xx is no treat....a lot of hardware has to be pulled out of the way before you can even get at the cage this board is in...

I liked the concept of how a C450, if I wanted to fix the MFP or fax and so on, the cage was an easy removal, relatively speaking. But even that has its drawbacks and is not universal.

[mrwho]

One of the things that awestruck me when I moved from KM to Ricoh was the abysmal difference between accessing the back of (for example) a KM C250 and an Aficio MPC2050.

On the KM, you need to take out a gazillion screws, three or four covers, five or six connectors, take out the controller cage and then you have access to the HV board - which you need to take out if you want to access the gears in the back. Pure nightmare!

On the Ricoh, you take out the back covers, two connectors, three screws and the controller cage has a hinge that makes it open like a door - first time I saw that I thought I was in engineer heaven!

[Lotec]

Yeah. . it's obvious that the designer don't work on the machines themselves.

You see the same thing with cars. I had an old Volvo from 1987 a few years back. That car was a dream to service. I could change the oil filter without even going under the car at all. I changed the timingbelt in less than 30 minutes. And the timingbelt cover was a clip on cover.
Because of the the easy maintnance, I drove that car 870 000km. And it was only rust that killed it.
Then I replaced the car with a used Peugeot and almost everything was harder. Parts were more expensive too.
And then I replaced that car with a VW Caravelle. This is not cool to work on because there is no extra space around the engine. Changing the glowplugs was a nightmare. Fuel lines was in the way, had to take of the front of the car to gain access and so on.

If a machine is service friendly it is actually less important for it to be reliable. I would ofcourse have both :-)
What's up with all the screws on some of the back covers btw? The old Ricoh 1060 only had 2 that I had to take out. Other newer designs on color and smaller b/w have a lot. Thinking of buying an electric screwdriver . . .

The designers should focus on making a machine where it's easy to take out modeles too. Like again in the Ricoh 1060 and newer where you can take out the complete paperfeed mechanism. It is fairly easy to take out, and a bit harder to replace. But you have 3 connectors and a plastic cover to remove first. Why don't they make it with a single plug in the end that will automatically be connected/disconnected when the part is installer/removed?. And just drop the covers. I'm sure they could make it look OK without all those plastic covers too. Or just make it a clip on cover...

I would really like to see Dyson make a redesign of a copier. That would be cool. Their design and engineering history is an example of thinking outside the box. Dyson official site
I like the way they redesigned the washing machine too a few years back.