AF 2035 second drum blade

[paulg]

Without getting into specifics - there's a number of branches of a large well known supermarket chain in my local area that have these machines on a pay-per-copy meter at the customer services desk.

I already dread attending the B/W machines that they have on contract with us because quite frankly - THEY ARE WRECKED!! A thumb through the service history book always reveals that whatever can be broken on the machine already has been at least twice.

jeez supermarkets and Hotels worst two places in general for Copiers. Worked all week and sometimes day long by not always the brightest staff and they treat the copiers as they get treated by their bosses.

[TonerMunkeh]

They go straight in the bin the second I have any reason to look in the PCU.

From what I've noticed of what these blades do, I've noticed a white scratch develops on the front of the drum (closest to front door) which progressively gets worse the closer the drum comes to about 100k. I've NEVER seen an Adonis drum with this blade in make it past the 120k mark.

[SGT_Snacks-64]

They go straight in the bin the second I have any reason to look in the PCU.

From what I've noticed of what these blades do, I've noticed a white scratch develops on the front of the drum (closest to front door) which progressively gets worse the closer the drum comes to about 100k. I've NEVER seen an Adonis drum with this blade in make it past the 120k mark.

I've seen this without the second cleaning blade installed, it's just that sure sign that it needs replacing.

I find the drums last to about 140k, if not just ever so slightly over.

[TonerMunkeh]

Nice! Have fun with that one

*In my opinion... THE worst designed colour machine doing the rounds* Thankfully they shouldn't be around for... too much longer.

Ohhh... spoke too soon there, Ricoh are putting out recycled ones!

[SGT_Snacks-64]

Ohhh... spoke too soon there, Ricoh are putting out recycled ones!

When will they learn?! Damn them! Damn them all to hell!

[b003ace]

Yes, but this second blade helps with cleaning toner that the main blade may miss. I actually was told (and thought) this blade cleaned the charge roller. That is `til I read the Detailed Description on this subject in the service manual. It clearly states that it is a secondary drum cleaning blade.

As for my opinion on removing it... Man, to be honest, I've never thought about removing it. Since this machine uses a finer toner, but the same primary cleaning blade, it only makes sense to leave it.

To help these machines run a little cleaner for longer, we leave the toner out and actually run about 30 copies of the Savin (or Ricoh) test pattern before running TD and Dev initializations. We started doing this only on the B003 family. After we found that it worked really well, we did it across the board. Even the ones that have all the updated firmware that is suppose to address a lot of the dusting / over toning issues this family has had. We still do this on the newest family as well with no problems.

I have found that these will run 150 to 170K with the second blade in, provided the silver spring AA062258 (2) update is installed on the blade. The toner in these models has been crap right from the start. There was even a "recall" on the first formula toner. I would never de-tone the models that use the 3110D/3210D toner (Savin 3545), as these are way too sensitive to toner density, and don't hold TD properly under the best of circumstances.
I personally believe the AF1035/AF1045 were the best in the entire series. They ran clean out of the box, unlike the 350/450. The only way to get the 350/450 to run right was to do ALL the tech pubs, and replace the drum end felts and foam seals at every other drum, as well as run sky-shots ( I use 2-902-9 test prints instead ) to de-tone to 3.85 to 4.00 range before doing dev init. New developer invariably reads 3.40 to 3.60 out of the bag on these, but target according to the pubs is still 4.00.

[rthonpm]

It looks like even the Big R is finally catching up to the wisdom of its techs: note this bulletin for the MP 4000:

[Lagonda]

Interesting RTB!
I've always encouraged our techs to leave the second blade in and haven't noticed a a lot of drums being replaced for premature wear. As for the reason for the second blade is there to start with I was always under the impression it was to scrape off any paper dust on the drum to stop the dust getting into the dev and upsetting the TD readings. Since you never find toner on the second blade only paper dust they seem to be doing a good job.
Have I been deluded all these years or do we use different toner Down Under? I know our paper is a lot harded then the stuff the Asians use.

[cobiray]

I've been taking them off the first time I dig into the drum unit. Most times it's not until the first PM is due, or to clean the charge roller on low volume boxes. On of the other techs had gone to school and said they were recommending them be removed(?). I've not seen any reason not to leave them off. In fact, it's one less thing I have to check on someone when they call me and says they can't get the drum back in the unit.

My personal experience is that they do collect more dust in the unit which ends up mucking up the charge roller earlier that expected. I'd say it probably hurts the developer to keep it from going 300k, but I've never seen a machine with more than 200k on the developer that didn't need replaced.

My thought is, it may keep more dust out of the developer but it doesn't go anywhere but into the drum unit and onto the charge roller area. Seems it's pick your poison. I'd personally rather replace the developer with the other PM items that muck up the charge roller every 80-100k.

[Shadow1]

I had so many different problems resulting from these that they go straight to File 13 at setup. Some of the early blades actually "melted" gray streaks onto the drum, the old springs caused excessive wear, excessive paper dust buildup is a problem - eventually something gets caught and scratches the drum... the list goes on.
I've had other techs say they have problems with Charge roller buildup if they leave them out. I've had problems with "toner rings" on the C-Roller, but it seems no better with the 2nd blade installed, and the "Con's" definately outweigh the "Pro's" to me.
There seems to be a general downward trend in this line of machines and the 2nd drum blade is nowhere near the top of my list of complaints - I just launch it into the nearest garbage can and move on.