Ricoh MP C4503 print quality problem

[EricToner]

Hi Everyone

I'm not a Ricoh technician... but any advice would be greatly appreciated. We have a Ricoh MP C5502 and MP C4503 machine both with the same print quality problem.

Please see the attached picture, we printed from a PC and USB and had the same results. We updated the firmware on both machines and changed out print units with no success. Thank you!

[slimslob]

Have you ran Auto Color Control? User Tools - Maintenance - Auto Color Control.

[Elmo]

Is the problem just with this particular image or all colour prints
what is the image like when printed in black only

[EricToner]

Is the problem just with this particular image or all colour prints
what is the image like when printed in black only

It's not this particular image, it happens with all color prints. I just tried black only on the 4503 and it's also has the problem. Attached is the BW sample print

We tried color calibration and ran auto color control without any luck. Another Ricoh technician is coming to look at these machines, possibly today, and hopefully will have some luck this time diagnosing. Thank you for the help!

[Elmo]

From the samples it looks like a black pcu issue poss drum/developer

[EricToner]

From the samples it looks like a black pcu issue poss drum/developer

Ok, we changed all cmyk drum units approx 4 days ago. print quality was fine for 2 days and then the problem came back, strange.

I will post if our Ricoh technician solves this for us today and what he found. Thanks again

[Elmo]

Was it the complete pcu's you replaced or just the drum's
did you run the developer intialise after replacing them
you could run Forced Toner Supply in sp mode
then try a print and see if the quality has improved

[Dragord]

Is this prints and copies? Is it a driver fault, try pcl or rpcs

[Cipher]

Looks like some kind of image processing fault, possibly driver or application related.
The fact it's occurring on two different model ranges would suggest to me it's not a mechanical issue.

[slimslob]

Looks like some kind of image processing fault, possibly driver or application related.
The fact it's occurring on two different model ranges would suggest to me it's not a mechanical issue.

I hadn't thought about that. It could be some type of malware on the computer. If by USB Eric meant Print From Memory Device, I would take the USB drive to another that has proper malware protection and see if it displays properly there. If it was just was just network or USB cable printing, I would say it might be the wrong driver. If using the Microsoft Windows "Ricoh Class" driver or Ricoh's "PCL6 Driver for Universal Print", download and install either the regular PCL6 driver or the PCL5 driver. In some applications, the PCL5 driver gives better color.