CL4000DN Stripe missing color/toner

[jsulliva]

Solved and fixed.
Problem was caused by the laser shutter seals, those little strips of felt seal glued to the underside of the shutter. One had come loose at one end and was partially blocking the laser.
Removed them all rather than wait for another one to come loose.
Thank you to all for their thoughtful suggestions.
John

[alissonsantana]

Hi, j sullivan.


I'm facing the same problem you had. It's no clear to me the pcu parts you're referring on your explanation.


Is the laser shutter visible outside the PCU or do I need to disassembly it to to see the shutter?


I'll appreciate a lot if you'll could help me.

Solved and fixed.
Problem was caused by the laser shutter seals, those little strips of felt seal glued to the underside of the shutter. One had come loose at one end and was partially blocking the laser.
Removed them all rather than wait for another one to come loose.
Thank you to all for their thoughtful suggestions.
John

[jsulliva]

If you remove the PCUs from the printer and look at the surface below where they sit, you will see a large metal sheet divided with separating rails that position the PCUs. In the middle of each of these areas is a long narrow slot, about 1 inch (25 MM) wide by 10 inches (250 MM), perhaps a little longer (I am writing from memory and not looking at one at the moment). The closed shutter plate assembly is visible through these slots. When the printer is operating, the plate moves and the shutter openings align so the laser can shine through the slots and through the large plate and through the corresponding slot in the bottom of each PCU and onto the photo-conducting material in the PCU. The shutters are a large plate with slits as part of a larger Shutter Assembly (tray with shutter plate). On the bottom of the shutter plate, around each shutter slot, is a felt wiper/seal. These are attached via glue. In my case, the glue was letting go and a portion of some of the wipers were lying across the window which was partially obstructing the laser beam on its way to the PCU.
My printer had sat in a warehouse in Texas (very hot in summer here), probably not Air Conditioned, for quite some time, so perhaps this led to the glue failure. A first attempt at repair (didn't have part on hand) was to simply remove the felt wipers.
This was not completely satisfactory as little bits of felt and glue tended to flake off after that (didn't take shutter assembly completely apart to clean it).
Also, they are also wiper, intended to remove any contaminants that get on the glass, so over time this would become an issue as well.

Perhaps someone who works on these will comment if the glue failure is a common problem as they age.

After a short while it became clear there was still a problem, so the repairman ordered a new shutter assembly.
In parts manual, this is G102-1990 "Cover: Optical Housing: Ass'y".
It was not too expensive, IIRC about $40 new from a local company that services Ricoh Printers. The work to replace it was an hour or more by a knowledgeable repair technician and involved taking a good bit of the machine apart, mostly from the Right Side.

After putting it back together, we had to manually force it to run its 2 calibration programs (second one first) through the Console in Service Mode as the colors were off until we did so. Running the first listed calibration program always got an error and didn't fix things, until we ran the second and then the first and it worked.

I hope that answers your questions and can help you.
John

[alissonsantana]

First of all, thanks for taking the time to answer me!
Your symptoms was very similar to mine. Nevertheless, I'm still in doubt about what are really causing this issue. Here in my place, Minas Gerais State, Brazil, it's very hot too. ~ 98ºF at midday.


I recently replaced the all the PCU, due to the end of its useful lifetime.


This old PCU set had the same problem. A faint stripe vertically displayed through the page, positioned right in the middle of page. (I forgot to say that this is happening only with the yellow toner.)


I always thought that the problem was with the yellow PCU. Once this problem happened with the old PCU set (when page count was at 75K approx.) , it lasted till the PCU substitution.


With the new PCU set, the faint stripe just vanished! But now, with approximately 5K pages printed, the damn faint stripe came back! But now it's positioned at the right side of page. Something near to 2 inches from the border.


I also noted that the cyan tonner presented the same problem with this new PCU, but lasted only a few pages, and than became normal again.


Considering your explanation, I'll take a better look in to the laser plate. But I believe that sooner or later I'll need to take this printer to a maintenance service and also buy a new one, letting the old one as a spare printer.


Below are some images demonstrating the problem. Just to be sure we're talkning about the same issue

Once again, thank you a lot!

IMG_1134.JPG IMG_1135.JPG

If you remove the PCUs from the printer and look at the surface below where they sit, you will see a large metal sheet divided with separating rails that position the PCUs. In the middle of each of these areas is a long narrow slot, about 1 inch (25 MM) wide by 10 inches (250 MM), perhaps a little longer (I am writing from memory and not looking at one at the moment). The closed shutter plate assembly is visible through these slots. When the printer is operating, the plate moves and the shutter openings align so the laser can shine through the slots and through the large plate and through the corresponding slot in the bottom of each PCU and onto the photo-conducting material in the PCU. The shutters are a large plate with slits as part of a larger Shutter Assembly (tray with shutter plate). On the bottom of the shutter plate, around each shutter slot, is a felt wiper/seal. These are attached via glue. In my case, the glue was letting go and a portion of some of the wipers were lying across the window which was partially obstructing the laser beam on its way to the PCU.
My printer had sat in a warehouse in Texas (very hot in summer here), probably not Air Conditioned, for quite some time, so perhaps this led to the glue failure. A first attempt at repair (didn't have part on hand) was to simply remove the felt wipers.
This was not completely satisfactory as little bits of felt and glue tended to flake off after that (didn't take shutter assembly completely apart to clean it).
Also, they are also wiper, intended to remove any contaminants that get on the glass, so over time this would become an issue as well.

Perhaps someone who works on these will comment if the glue failure is a common problem as they age.

After a short while it became clear there was still a problem, so the repairman ordered a new shutter assembly.
In parts manual, this is G102-1990 "Cover: Optical Housing: Ass'y".
It was not too expensive, IIRC about $40 new from a local company that services Ricoh Printers. The work to replace it was an hour or more by a knowledgeable repair technician and involved taking a good bit of the machine apart, mostly from the Right Side.

After putting it back together, we had to manually force it to run its 2 calibration programs (second one first) through the Console in Service Mode as the colors were off until we did so. Running the first listed calibration program always got an error and didn't fix things, until we ran the second and then the first and it worked.

I hope that answers your questions and can help you.
John

[alissonsantana]

I've replied your message, but it seems the post has been rejected by the moderation.


I'll wait to see if it's going to be approved. If not, I'll write again. The content was a little bit extense.

If you remove the PCUs from the printer and look at the surface below where they sit, you will see a large metal sheet divided with separating rails that position the PCUs. In the middle of each of these areas is a long narrow slot, about 1 inch (25 MM) wide by 10 inches (250 MM), perhaps a little longer (I am writing from memory and not looking at one at the moment). The closed shutter plate assembly is visible through these slots. When the printer is operating, the plate moves and the shutter openings align so the laser can shine through the slots and through the large plate and through the corresponding slot in the bottom of each PCU and onto the photo-conducting material in the PCU. The shutters are a large plate with slits as part of a larger Shutter Assembly (tray with shutter plate). On the bottom of the shutter plate, around each shutter slot, is a felt wiper/seal. These are attached via glue. In my case, the glue was letting go and a portion of some of the wipers were lying across the window which was partially obstructing the laser beam on its way to the PCU.
My printer had sat in a warehouse in Texas (very hot in summer here), probably not Air Conditioned, for quite some time, so perhaps this led to the glue failure. A first attempt at repair (didn't have part on hand) was to simply remove the felt wipers.
This was not completely satisfactory as little bits of felt and glue tended to flake off after that (didn't take shutter assembly completely apart to clean it).
Also, they are also wiper, intended to remove any contaminants that get on the glass, so over time this would become an issue as well.

Perhaps someone who works on these will comment if the glue failure is a common problem as they age.

After a short while it became clear there was still a problem, so the repairman ordered a new shutter assembly.
In parts manual, this is G102-1990 "Cover: Optical Housing: Ass'y".
It was not too expensive, IIRC about $40 new from a local company that services Ricoh Printers. The work to replace it was an hour or more by a knowledgeable repair technician and involved taking a good bit of the machine apart, mostly from the Right Side.

After putting it back together, we had to manually force it to run its 2 calibration programs (second one first) through the Console in Service Mode as the colors were off until we did so. Running the first listed calibration program always got an error and didn't fix things, until we ran the second and then the first and it worked.

I hope that answers your questions and can help you.
John