monocomponent toner or separate better

[Stirton.M]

Since I only know KM, very little of the other brands, I am a fan of the colour units. Relatively far easier to clean than many of the older generation monochromes, ep series especially, some DI series....and I hear even some of the bizhubs are all dusty inside. Takes me 5 minutes with a tac rag to clean a colour machine, inside and out. Takes 15 minutes or longer to deal with a monochrome. Not sure why the monochromes are so dirty relative, should be little difference I would think. But then, some of the colour units I first worked on were not so great when it came to fusing oil.....that shit gets EVERYWHERE if yer not careful.

[mojorolla]

I also prefer the toner/developer system. They seem to run a bit dirtier, but overall, service costs are usually cheaper. We took on Sharp a little over a year ago, and they run MUCH cleaner than the Panasonic machines. They fun part starts when the company wants to use third party toner. The stuff we use for the Panasonic eats developer and messes up the OPC's sometimes.

[randiman]

Oce was using mono component toners forever, true w/color and b/w. Yes, the b/w image could use some darkening up but from the standpoint of service its one less thing to get involved with. There is no toner waste either with the Oce non commercial printers to distinguish between the divisions.

Im sick of Ricoh needing developers every 150 on the color 45 cpm m/c's. Their toner is an ungodly mixture too. They play around with the plastics and agents to the point they create numerous problems w/ the m/c's and with customers alike. Seems like every mid volume b/w I go to there is an issue with backgrounding and charge adjustments. Ricoh/Savin/lanier creates and then dismisses so many problems with this overly burdensome engineering that has few if any merits. It flows down hill to the dealers who have to replace charge roll assy (color mid vol) like underwear. Since they departed from the tried and true corona system its been a nightmare.

Glad to hear about Canon as Im movin on.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

How does Oce' manage no waste toner?

[JR2ALTA]

Don't know about Oce, but old Mita's would recycle toner. The drum blade would drop unused toner onto an auger spring that would move it back into the toner hopper.

I'm a newer tech, only seen a few. I can't imagine it was a good idea.

[randiman]

It uses a transfuser belt that contacts the master (drum). The belt takes the image transferred from the master and fuses it into the paper. That fused image can be archived unlike most xerographic processes. Its not completely without waste now that I think of it. (Been over 2 yrs). But the way it works is it generates black toner images every 200 pages or so to cover the belt and act as a magnet to clean the belt of dust and dirt and other stray particles when its not imaging. By way of a slotted hollow spiral roller that contacts the ttf (transfuse transfer) belt, the small amount of excess toner moves wicks from the hot surface to the "cooler" surface. The spiral roller has to be replaced once it fills since it holds 1500 black "pages". It does one every 200 pages for a total of around 300k and the intervals can be adjusted for a cleaner running machine.

for color: http://www.cambridgeprinters.co.uk/d.../copypress.pdf

b/w: http://www.win.tue.nl/oowi/modeling%.../project3.html

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

Not sure I exactly understand how Oce' does it yet but I'll read the articles. I'm interested in learning more about it.

[TennWalker]

I primarily work on the Sharp AR-M355N, AR-M207, and a few AR-M700N's in our area. We have problems with churches wanting the copies especially dark (AR-M355/455) I will replace the developer, drum, blade, etc. Reset the counters and perform sub 25-2. Invariably, after developer fall off a few weeks later, the client calls back stating the copies are too light. I was unaware that code 44 existed in these machines. Perhaps, the special service mode?

Long story short, they typically run cheaper, but can get dirty at times. Mostly, I see undertoning.

[kingpd@businessprints.net]

I hear you there. I've been having a nightmare of a time with an IR600. For years it's printed REALLY good blacks but lately it's been one thing after another.

My client is doing their own marketing and doing postcards, inserts, etc. with white text and a solid black background, several thousand every week. Maybe it was too much for the old girl.

Now many years ago, one of the few Xerox's I really liked, the 1090. That one did good solid blacks. Toner or something was different than today b/c it wasn't as shiny or waxy I guess and could scratch off a little easier. But the printing looked pitch black, about like toner looks on a page on any of today's machines before it reaches the fuser.

[Shadow1]

From what I've seen the toner/dev systems are capable of producing much denser solids, and Ricoh has been using Pixel count and process controls in addition to TD sensors for years to keep density stable (more or less successfully depending on model)

Monocomponent certainly runs cleaner and produces nice solids on slower speed machines, but not on any of the higher speed stuff I've seen so far.

All the Ricoh Production machines use toner/developer systems, but they've been tweaked to back the density down so they run cleaner - you can set them up to run saturated solids if your customer needs/wants this, but plan on cutting about 30% off the developer life.

A few Ricoh products (most notably the color machines) have some low percentage of developer mixed in with the new toner and an overflow system so that the machine is constantly changing its own developer. This works great on the Pro C900, and was a disaster on the MPC6000.

BTW, the MPC6000 and B2969640 products having poor reputations has nothing to do with dual component systems - The engineers don't have to work on their own products, its as simple as that.

[Hemlock]

How does Oce' manage no waste toner?

They have waste toner, it's just disposed of in a different fashion. Where most have a waste toner container, Oce uses a hollow, grooved roller that rides on the fusing belt to collect stray toner & paper dust. The first (and only) Venlo built color box did use a waste container. But, as they failed mightily in their attempt at color, that device is a thing of the past. Thank gawd.


How they do it.

[randiman]

Hemlock, this is Geoff Adkisson. Are you still with Oce'? Md or DC tech? So the 700/800/900 bit the dust? I got certified on the CPS700 with Dave Patek back in Dec of 2001. The way I remember the 700 not standing up well against the competition is it cost $140k at 22 cpm compared to a Ricoh at under $20k and 60cpm. Technically the fiberglass TTF drum was doomed from the start - the image drums were a nice touch except for the internal magnet falling apart - and that it was monocomponent kept ya from several svc calls, but the fuser was the worst thing on earth.
I worked with Smith/Carplunk/Rountree/Irwin/Stonesifer and ending up in the Commercial Print Division working the 24/7 shift. Now Im about to start w/Canon. Hows that for comin full circle?
Do I know you?

[Hemlock]

@randiman - We probably met in passing. I started in '96, working for Rob Carpluck on the Northern VA team; trained on the 3045/3165/2475 families. He got promoted and we ended up working for Tom Palen. Hated that, so I moved to Richmond in 2000, where I got trained on the 3100 boxes. Left to work at a Kyocera/Konica dealership down there and just recently came to SoMD where I worked for a reseller on the CPS series, Varioprint 2110s and VP 6250s.

I trained with Patek as well, but not 'til 2008. Demand was so low that I was the only person in that 2 week class. That 700/800/900 was a joke; all that complexity for 30cpm (god help you if you wanna duplex!). The 6250s, though, were simply amazing; 4 million and I never had to touch a paper feed system, the inside of the process unit was still clean enough to eat off of.

Tom Brick

[randiman]

My 2nd week was up in Chicago and I get an email from Palen asking me to come to work for him. Nobody I know said anything good about him.
I went the same route with 3165/Color inc Canon oem's/2110/3090/ Commercial div - 6250/5160/Roll fed - 7000/8000/9000. So you probably remember Abram Peele, Johnathan Baylor, Matt Harding, Neil Goodman.....Whos the reseller selling Oce'?
They make some fine boxes. In the commerical print division they have the 5160 (cut sheet) - air fed paper trays- 12 million interval for belt changes - light barriers - U shaped optical sensors/no flags to get notched and the firmware would auto update any board that wasnt of the same level, 2 identical engines, the coronas were cartridges of 6 that would reel out to the far side of the assy. Built like brick sh-t houses in the commercial div anyway. It was such a chore to go to Boca for training.

[Hemlock]

Wow, I worked with Abram, Jonathan & Neil - don't remember Matt though. There were also a couple others; Jim Fain & Jim Lovell both come to mind, I'm sure more names will come up if I dwell on it. Do you remember Gary Jaworski? He was the Veep of Service for the Southeast region.

The reseller I worked for was one called Union Office Solutions (now defunct, as far as I know). I would've liked to get into the heavy iron & roll fed equipment; sadly, I'm still supporting cut sheet boxes for a print shop (Ricoh). Decent enough machines, but they don't have any wow factor on a resume'. That 5160 you pointed out looks just like the Varioprint 2090/2110.

Boca? You dog! I've been to Chicago 12 times for school. Truth be told, Chi-town beats the hell out of Jersey though.