What was your biggest oopsy on a call??

[Jimbo1]

Like accidentally blowing toner all over the room or such??

But more embarrrasing....

[blackcat4866]

KAPOW!

That would have to be when I was diagnosing a lens unit problem on a Mita DC142.

To actually watch the lens unit operate, you have to remove the light source #1 (there only was 1 because of the moving tabletop). The self diagnostics were so rudimentary that it did not recognize that the lamp was removed.

So here I am pressing the enlargement and reduction presets, watching the lens move forward, forward, back, back. I guess I wasn't paying too much attention to the live wires to the lamp. Then..

KAPOW! All the lights went out in the back half of the office. Once we got the lights back on, you could see where the one lamp terminal welded itself quite nicely to the rear frame.

The only other damage was the main breaker, which sounded like a lot of little broken parts in a cylindrical container. That was an easy fix, bypassing it with a fuse. But I still could not find my #2 Phillips.

As I was slinking away (the copier working), I noticed my screwdriver stuck in the suspended ceiling tile, about 10 feet away. I guess the noise caught me by surprise.

[Jordan]

Redfaced

I was servicing a old sst150 duplicator with a trainee. After cleaning the the unit, my trainee insisted we put ink in because the light was on. The ink for this unit came in a big plastic toothpaste shaped container that you squeezed into the top of the drum cylinder. I handed him the ink and said squeeze hard so you get all of it out. He did as told and when the tube reached empty it sounded like a Bull farting in a 50 gallon barrell. Did I mention we where working in school teachers workroom. That country boy turned 10 shades of red. I just covered my face to keep from laughing out loud. The joy of training.

[lkrsardis]

oops

I was shaking a bottle of savin770 toner one time and the customer walked up and started to talk to me. I stopped the shaking and put the bird feeder on and sense the customer was still running her mouth for some reason I started shaking the bottle again. The customers eyes went wide and she started pointing at the wall, you guessed it, I was painting a wall and the ceiling that weekend.

[jpcopy]

picked a new school to service and the people before me had never brought their vac in befor so I had some cleaning to do. the lady that ran their copies though that was wonderfull how I had cleaned up their messy machines with my vac. a few week later I got a call for help from them (don't remember the problem ) but arriving at the copiers, it look liked someone had painted the walls black. asked what happened and they said they dropped the waste toner bottle and since I had did such a good job with my vac she just pulled hers out and started vacuuming. I told her about the difference in vac and fix machine an wished her luck with clean up. they had it cleaned up mostly by the next time I went there.

[prntrfxr]

What was your biggest oopsy on a call??

my very first "in the field" copier pm - had been doing pm's in office on Ricoh's. used the vacuum and fried a toshiba developer unit. boss was not too pleased.

[fixthecopier]

The Minolta Di520/620 has a large waste toner bin, if it were fresh it would be about 100,000 pages worth of toner and my shop would not replace them, I had to empty them. I was on the top floor of the Army Special Operatons Command Center and had just emptied one. As I stood up and picked up my plastic bag, the bottom split and about 5 pounds of toner flowed across the floor and up the walls. I was there for 2 more hours with a trash can full of water and a box of paper towels cleaning up the copy room.

[DadO]

3 months ago i fixed an ir2230 whit a pickup problems.It was copier for an bank. To get to pickups u had to dismantle large side cover whit 5 screws who covered complete right side. I cleaned pickups a lot of times to fix a problem but wasn't able to till i didn't get an modification. Machine worked so i left. Recently they called me(last week) because an image problem.

First thing i saw was that big right side cover wasn't placed on copier. I saw 5 screws on the wall next to the machine in plastic box and an pickup roll.
I was mad. I ask them an question "WHO TOUCHED THE MACHINE"
They replayed
"IT WAS YOU, YOU TOUCH IT LAST "................................................. .....

I probably forgot to put the screws in the cover so he fell of when i left.....
Can u feel what i feel whole last week

[wagon]

Maybe scratching TWO Di450 drums in a row

Or the best one..
I was in the middle of a pathology lab, doing a dev change on a Toshiba 2060... I tipped the old dev, cleaned out tank and such... OK
Then I shook the dev bottle... OK
Then I removed the dev bottle lid - and sat it on top of the bottle untightened... OK
Then I shook the bottle again.

Chimney sweep.

And it was my birthday. Had to drive home with no shirt on (itchy!).

[James Hilton]

Toner all over the place

Like Jimbo 1 stated.

adding toner to a machine, than it's on the floor, in the equipment, and it's on you !!!

[djbass]

Maybe scratching TWO Di450 drums in a row

Not sure what a Di450 drum is worth, but I can't describe the feeling of scratching a brand new iR5000 drum (approx $2500 dealer price) because a screw was stuck to the dev roller.

I also recall demonstrating to a customer how to install a toner and removing the plastic strip before installing in the machine covering both of us head to toe in toner.

My most memorable though was my first day as a trainee copier tech. I had moved a machine while I was working on it so that the sorter was sitting under a low laying bench top. Forgetting to move it back to its original position I switched the machine on to test it and watched in horror as all 20 bins smashed themselves into the bench top one after the other.

[Steve Perks]

I remember one from my early days at Xerox.

Can't remember the model now, but it was a low volume machine.
I was new to the industry and inexperienced.
It was a clamshell model and I was checking around the fuser area with the power still on, not realising that even though the clamshell was open, the end of the fuser lamp was still live.

I got a shock from the lamp and the reflex action caused me to jerk my hand back, busting my nose in the process.

I left a bloody trail on the customers carpet all the way to the toilet.

I've kicked and broken 2 platen glasses in my 20 years in the industry and dropped a massive waste toner bottle from an old Xerox 1075, creating a toner pyramid around my shoes and on the customers carpet.

Maybe I should stop there...I've had no 'incidents' for aprox 15 years and wouldn't like to temp fate.

[iMind]

Shit, just thinkig of it...

After installing an aficio 2045 it was time to teach some operators how the machine worked, everybody around me hearing what I had to say, imagine what I sneezed and the hole touchscreen was full of snot, yeah snot all over no cloth nearby, fuck what a feeling, that was some years ago, but still when I get a call for that customer I feel sick...

[laserman06]

First got into this business working on a Xerox 1090 and cross the legs of a relay and sent 110 thru the 24v circuit. Not a pretty sight. Ever see a chip explode off of a circuit board.

Xerox 9790-Was doing a fuser trim and didn't get the wiper holder installed properly. Thermostat located on wiper holder. Leave the account and get a call ten minutes later. Copier is on fire. Told operator to turn off and unplug copier. By the time I got back, the fuser had got so hot that it had started melting the wiper. Was not burning, just smoking enough to set off the halon system.

13 years later and still in the business.

[pspahr]

At least I was in a hospital

About 10 years ago I was at an account which, luckily, was a hospital. I was working on a Ricoh FT8680. Those machines had a thing about jamming fairly regularly if nothing had been done to them in a while. Of course they'd get a delay jam, the customer would open the drawer, and they'd shred a sheet of paper in the feed unit inlet guide. Occassionally another sheet of paper would get behind the drawer (still happens even on new equipment) and get crammed into the drawer connector.....

Well on this day that had occurred. The machine was a big thing (ran 11x17 LEF) and they had it in a virtual closet. Literally just wide and deep enough to fit in the room. Opening the front doors would touch the opposing wall. Well, I shut off the copier, pulled out the tray, got down on my back and with hemostats in hand, went to pull out the paper from the connector.....forgetting that the tray heaters come on when the main power was shut off. 100Vac across the two pins in the connector and my hemostats completed that connection.

I already had a bum shoulder from a previous accident (running network cabling) and this posistion my body was in and my reaction to the shock easily dislocated my shoulder again. Picture now if you will a man, on his back, one shoulder touching a wall, the other deep inside a machine, screaming, in a hospital. Had I been watching I'd have laughed my azz off, certainly. Luckily, the nurses who got there first were much more professional (in other words they waited to laugh when I couldn't see). Anyway, to get out of the copier they had to roll me ONTO the dislocated shoulder in order to allow my arm to come out of the machine due to the confined space.

Anyway, no matter the pain it caused, physically and mentally, I still loved those old FT8680/90/8780/90 machines. I must be in a world of my own.