What makes a machine a dog.

[fixthecopier]

A dog is what we call the machines that keep coming back, needing to be petted. I now have one. A bizhub 600 that keeps throwing false c0201 codes. The code is for lift on the first tray. I replaced the tray, upgraded the firmware, replaced the motor that lifts it, and still it codes. As luck would have it the machine is in the same building as the contract manager for 300 of my machines. He is talking about us replacing the machine because it codes maybe once every two or three weeks, and will reset when you reboot the machine. My shop will frown upon me if I have to eat a machine over such a minor problem. Well anyway that is the background for starting this thread.
Question is, does your shop have a policy about what makes a dog? When do you bring in the extra help? When do you eat the machine? Any bad dog stories? My contract for the 300 states that a machine should be replaced if it gets three legit work orders in a thirty day period, however 99% of the end users do not know that and I would not shoot myself in the foot by telling them. But on the other hand when I think back I do not think I would have had to replace one in the last four and a half years under those circumstances.

[TonerMunkeh]

Replaced after 3 calls in a month?

Holy hannah, I wish we could do that.

For our sins, we all have machines that turn out to be a complete bastard.

Our rule of thumb is to look at the machine, attempt a fix, if we can't fix it it gets escalated to our tech spec, then product spec, then a replacment is organised.

With regard to stories, one that springs to mind is a Mojito C2 that came on call for feint copies. I attended the call, replaced dev, drum, transfer belt, corona wire and grid, the usual suspects, all to no avail. I escalated it to our tech spec, he ordered a new dev unit, dev power pack, complete corona unit, transfer unit, transfer power pack and went back a few days after to fit them. No joy. Call got escalated to product specialist. He wanders in, says something along the lines of "let's take this bugger down to the frame". So tech and product spec have this copier in a few thousand pieces on the floor, they happen to notice that a small harness on the side of the BICU board looks slightly out of position. Yes, you guessed it - transfer power pack harness. It had been reconnected incorrectly by the last engineer to attend the call for SC495. The machine worked fine for the best part of a month and a half and then the connector must have popped out on one side. What a pain in the arse.

We've had Alex's code out with SC144-02 that have needed to be replaced, dead Apollons, Athenas, etc etc.

We're just unlucky enough to be in the kind of job where you will get a machine that is bad out of the box. Aren't we a priveliged bunch?

[blackcat4866]

We really don't have a policy on dogs, though I've dealt with plenty over the years.

On one occasion, we had a Sharp AR-507 with 5M copies, and two more years to go on the contract. There was someone there twice a week trying in vain to keep this poor tired beast sputtering along. I had it brought back to the office for a rebuild, but the poor thing was just so worn out. Fortunately, there was an AR-507 in the scrapyard with only 350K on the counter. Swap in a drum, developing unit, and the back cover with the serial #, and we were good for the last two years.

Now there were whole lines of machines that the manufacturer made no attempt to fix. For example the Mita DC-4055 and the drum cleaning issues due to paper dust. On (5) other machines of the same group, an EEPROM change was done to make the drum blade tap. Not the 4055. The only way of keeping the remaining machines going in the end was to clean the reg roller dust collector and install a drum blade every visit, and every visit was for drum cleaning.

Or the Sharp AR-M550N/M620N/M700N that had no fuser cleaning mechanism whatsoever. No felt, oil roller, web, fuser blade, nothing. Only a couple of heat sink rollers that caked up with toner. And what a surprise! The fuser filled up with partially fused toner dust, and sprinkled it on the copies. Sharp did absolutely nothing about this for two years. The new style fuser did come out. We waited (4) months to get a few assemblies, but no maintenance kits were available for months after that. I think the real problem was that there was just no room in the shell for a real web mechanism, and they were hoping to retire the model for the MX-M550/M620/M700, and maybe noone would notice that it never got fixed properly. I had machines with 3M+ copies, and the main thing I did was brush out the filthy fusers. Now that's a dog. In most other respects it wasn't a bad machine.

=^..^=

[Dark Helmet]

We waited (4) months to get a few assemblies, but no maintenance kits were available for months after that.

You can buy the entire fuser that comes with the oil cleaning roller that turns with the fuser from supplies cheaper than you can rebuild the fuser.

AR703FU1

Saves a ton of tech time to.