How to identify my Bizhub C203 problem?

[allan]

Re: How to identify my Bizhub C203 problem?

Could be the main drive?

Fun thing is this machine makes it easy to run / stabilize with the side door open.

[habik]

Re: How to identify my Bizhub C203 problem?

Hi hope you are well.

If the machine is doing it on occasion or lightly..then you maybe still in luck (temporarily until the gears give away completely) and the lumps of toner can be sucked out from the auger from top of the machine when the left hand side cover and the top tray are removed. You will need a mirror, flashlight and vacuume cleaner with narrow nozzle to put it inside the toner delivery augers top cups. Inside it is a spring to agitate the toner so it doesn't create lumps( well its a ot easier to give the cartridge a prolong shaking to keep the toner in dust form. anyway:

Open the front door an dremove all toners and Imaging Units and Waste box. Open right hand side door and remove the transfer belt (two screws securing the silver locking plates). Now try and turn the drive gear with hand towards you. If you start getting that noise then ask someone to turn the belt drive gear whilst you start vacuming the waste pipe. (Pain to get to all holes Item 9 x4 and the waste port for the waste box item 18 x1 on the parts catalog page) If you think you cleaned it then clean the toner hoppers as well.

Shine the light from the the top of where the the toners are and in line of your sight and angle it with mirror to see whats happening whilst you vacuuming the toner hopper . Now you'll need someone to keep turning that drive of Transfer belt as all that is driven by the same drive mechanism. Keep doing it unit you don't hear that skipping of the gears.

Now I don't recall if the drive ubnit was OUT of the machine whilst I was turning the Transfer Belt or not..Sorry..I just really don't remember. Try it. You'll notice how difficult it is. I was able to turn it by hand.

Let us know if you can turn it by hand. Good luck.

Kind Regards,

[AVW]

Re: How to identify my Bizhub C203 problem?

you maybe still in luck (temporarily until the gears give away completely) and the lumps of toner can be sucked out from the auger from top of the machine when the left hand side cover and the top tray are removed. You will need a mirror, flashlight and vacuume cleaner with narrow nozzle to put it inside the toner delivery augers top cups. Inside it is a spring to agitate the toner so it doesn't create lumps( well its a ot easier to give the cartridge a prolong shaking to keep the toner in dust form. anyway:

Hi habik!

Two weeks ago we had all suggested parts together (nozzele, mirror, ...) and for the first time enough time to care about our 203.
We followed your advice, and vacuumed the augers from above (and the wastte toner system). As we could not move the transfer gear more than one round we gave up at that point. Last week we started to take apart the machine, and tried vacuuming everything again.
At the moment the PWB box, HV unit and Transport Motor are out.

The interresting part is, that all augers are empty and look very clean now. The spring inside the augers is working well at all colours! I cannot move the gear system by hand as it would need too much force. So I moved the Transport Motor by hand. I can always move it for about 20 rounds (about 1 round at the transfer belt gear), before the noise starts and the gears are overrunning. The sound comes definitely from somewhere behind or "inside" the Transport Drive Unit.
All (!) the gears at the right side (when I look at the back of the machine), means waste toner gears, auger system gears, are not moving when the overrunning and the sound happens after about 20 rounds of the Transport Motor (while they move well in both directions, for that 20 rounds of the motor). That means that the overrunning does not happen there.
So when I move the Transport Motor back, for again 20 rounds, the augers do not move. But the overrunning happens in the other direction as well then. Moving the motor again the augers move again, in the right direction (what makes sense to me as we do not like to transport toner back into the toner box *g*). We did it for sure 60 times, that means the augers seem to be really empty.

My next step will be to take out the transport drive unit and have a closer look. If I need to get out the augers completely one day, the transport drive unit needs to go out as well anyways

For others who may wonder again (or recognize that I am partially using wrong terms or do not get everything immediatly), I am not a technician. We are driving a non commercial place for printing in our city, in our spare time, so I am more the "interrested end user". And as we do not have money (but time), we need to try our best to fix the machines on our own.