MP 1100 Dog Ears Calling All High Volume Experts

[FRIDGEMAGNET]

Is the pressure roller in life?
I have had success with this by reducing the fuser nip to 7-8mm.
Also, although the jobs are not duplex, the copies may still use the duplex to give the correct page orientation and the duplex has been heavily modified over the last few years.

[tcs04]

I have two MP 1100s in the same location both with close to 6 mil. Everything been running great but now they are both dog earing the copies AFTER the fuser. The dog ears are not flat folded. I have cleaned the upper guide plates with the fingers and the fusers are recently PM'd. Even turned paper over too.

It is intermittent but will tend to get worse as the machines run until it eventually jams randomly in one of these locations 21-28 (between fuser exit and finisher entrance). Note: The customer does not duplex....just one-sided reports...a lot of them! Only runs 8.5 x 11.

I found that the pin on the drive shaft for the transport section (drives the heat pipe area and transport to duplex) is worn badly and have those ordered.

My question is does anyone have any additional advice? I was thinking that with them pushing 6 mil perhaps that the fuser exit guide plate could be part of the issue. But if that were the case the dog ears would be flat folded by the heat pipe roller, right??...these are just slightly bent up on the non-op side. Usually two to three inches in length.

Any feedback welcome.

Have seen this on a few machines, Ricoh tech UK confirm what KOPYKAT saya, Reduce the fuser nip to about 9mm. We have tried this a nd it seems to work.

Also, there have been a couple of bulletins over the years, one for the AF1085 and one for the MP1100. See attached.

We had some success changing the stripper fingers (see RTB)

[imaginemoko]

Have seen this on a few machines, Ricoh tech UK confirm what KOPYKAT saya, Reduce the fuser nip to about 9mm. We have tried this a nd it seems to work.

Also, there have been a couple of bulletins over the years, one for the AF1085 and one for the MP1100. See attached.

We had some success changing the stripper fingers (see RTB)

ah there was a bulliten on this issue... i just found it on visual inspection... thanks

[Shadow1]

I have the joy of having the highest number of print shops of any tech in our district, so I have a LOT of 85+ cpm machines...

Given the volume that must go through those machines and for the sake of your customer's sanity I'd say do all of the following and figure out the cause later:

Replace the strippers - they have caused this problem for me in the past. I never did see anything wrong with the old ones, but the problem disappeared instantly once I replaced them. Yes, I know this is before the heat pipe, but that does not crease dog eared corners flat. Remember the backside is resting on the transport belts and there is not enough tension to make a sharp crease. Also, the corner may line up between belts or in one of the belt holes and have little or no tension on it.

Check all of the spurs on the fuser exit guide. Remove any toner balls on the tips and make sure it spins freely - this has also caused odd jams and bent corners for me.

Clean the transport rollers. The MP9000 was famous for buildup untill the changed the plastic in the pro series, but there could still be a few spots here and there - just enough to skew the page slightly and make it catch somewhere else. It doesn't take much as fast as these things are.

Connect the tray heaters - Early in the day until the machine warms up all the way through I've had moisture burned off in the fuser recondense in the exit assembly and cause (mostly) jams. A drop of water on a paper guide is hard and sticky when you hit it at 40mph.

There are several 1way bearings in the exit assembly that should probably be cleaned / replaced, and a good inspection of all the idler pulleys and those funky 2 sided timing belts is also in order. I don't think the bearings your problem, as they have only caused intermittent jams for me, but they're about due to go out. Check the shafts as well - they tend to get scored pretty bad.

Check all the TB's for the duplexer as well - Fridgemagnet is correct, even though they are not duplexing all pages go through the inverter to exit face down.

Check the finisher very carefully - I've had a mylar sheet installed backwards from the factory on the upper exit tray folding or even tearing the paper and causing jams.

Good Luck!

[KopyKat]

Ok I'm sorry to report back this late but been very busy lately. I have good but baffleing news.

This has me confused...I went back to the customer two days later only to find that the machine had magically fixed itself...Seriously!! 10-20 cases of paper are run through the machine per week. I hate the FM (F'ing Magic) fixes. It's got me thinking maybe a bad pallet of paper??

Everything works fine now. No dog ears in a week. Kept in touch with the Key Op all week...he's one of my favorite customers, nice and laid back even when he is under the gun. Only went back for a follow up and found it had tossed a couple of SC 300's....changed out the Charge and Pre-Charge.

Damn, I really hate the way those coronas crash...at least on the previous models you'd get a few "tiger stripes" as a warning sign. These bastards suddenly just totally fill the page with the black stripes and code out SC300.

Thanks to all for the support.

[schooltech]

Yeah, those do suck because you'll still be thinking about that machine and how you never did find the problem. I've found that no matter how many machines I mentally "sweep under the rug" they almost always come back to bite me in the ass somewhere in the future.

So, 1/2 a pallet later and the machine is crusing along? Maybe some of the previous paper was cut a bit too close to the end of the paper roll at the mill or something and had just a bit too much of an inherent curl to it, even beyond what your eyes picked up. The other thing is that as you went through it and inspected all of the parts, something just seated better or meshed better after your inspection and may come back sometime in the future. Definitely a tough one.

As much paper as we run, it amazes me that I don't get as much bad paper as I would expect from running through about 45 pallets of paper per year, which is about nine million sheets.

[Shadow1]

A little teflon grease in the terminal cavities greatly extends the life of the corona assemblies. Just take a Q-tip and paint the inside liberally - don't even have to take the wires out. I went from just replacing the entire assembly every PM and never bothering to restring wires to getting 1.5 to 2M before they die.

I agree it sucks when a machine fixes itself - I have enough to do without the gremlins screwing with my mind...

As for your jamming problem, I strongly suspect the strippers or spurs had an itsy bitsy teensy weensy spot of toner stuck on them, and something finally hit it hard enough to knock it loose, but one last idea: How do the static brushes look in there. We usually have more than enough humidity to prevent problems like this, but every once in a while it gets dry enough to be a problem. It usually drives us nuts for a few days untill we figure out what is going on - we start seeing all sorts of strange things; problems we're not used to dealing with and can't explain untill we account for the weather. More than once we realized it was unusually dry and found a static brush worn to nothing.

[_Brent_]

Another good thing on the SC 300, I noticed arc marks on the corona end caps. I installed electrical tape on the areas where I noticed the arcs and have not had any problems. Keep that NIP adjustment in mind if your dog ears return. I just had a call like that last night, changed fuser rolls, fuser exit assembly, paper exit feed roll shafts and had same problem-intermittent dog ears on simplex/face down prints. After decreasing the NIP, paper was flat

[Shadow1]

I've never run across the need to do this on my big machines, although I've wished several times for the ability to do it on some smaller ones - How does it affect fusing on heavier stock paper?

[_Brent_]

I'm not sure about really heavy weight paper. This particular form was 24lbs. The fusing quality did not seem to be any different after I decreased the nip. Trust me on this one, I really didn't want to change the nip as the printer had been running for a few years with no problems. I thought it was a paper issue, but their second (same exact printer) printer runs the same exact batch of forms with no problems.