TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

[fishleg]

Hi,

We have a customer that keeps complaining that prints just randomly take 20 minutes to process and other times work fine.

All they say is the green light flashes and nothing happens for 20 minutes the job comes out and everything is back to normal.

These machines are not exactly common to me... I'm thinking is the machine stabilising before printing is there anything I can check like Dev voltages? Not sure what service code that is if there is one?

They print very basic office type documents so excel, emails, word not even anything large or taxing really do nothing like full of images it's basically all text and numbers.

Can you think of anything that would cause the machine to suddenly pause for 20 minn then continue? Toners are full, quality looks ok, machine has done 450k black 100k colour.

Cheers for any help.

[blackcat4866]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

WSD port/driver? =^..^=

[Santander]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Hi,

We have a customer that keeps complaining that prints just randomly take 20 minutes to process and other times work fine.

All they say is the green light flashes and nothing happens for 20 minutes the job comes out and everything is back to normal.

These machines are not exactly common to me... I'm thinking is the machine stabilising before printing is there anything I can check like Dev voltages? Not sure what service code that is if there is one?

They print very basic office type documents so excel, emails, word not even anything large or taxing really do nothing like full of images it's basically all text and numbers.

Can you think of anything that would cause the machine to suddenly pause for 20 minn then continue? Toners are full, quality looks ok, machine has done 450k black 100k colour.

Cheers for any help.

Does the machine copy OK? What print driver are they using? Is it all computers or just one? Are all the print jobs coming from the local network or is there one that is remote? If the machine is processing a print job as you describe for 20 minutes and then it comes out would indicate that the machine is waiting for the print driver on the computer to send additional information to continue. Take a look at the print job log to see if you can determine if it is one computer or a particular job that is hanging up. The log gives accepted time and completed time so you should be able to narrow it down.

[JR2ALTA]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Print crossover from your laptop. Stay there for a couple hours. Have them give you the same files.

[fishleg]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

[QUOTE=Santander;1614622]Does the machine copy OK? What print driver are they using? Is it all computers or just one? Are all the print jobs coming from the local network or is there one that is remote? If the machine is processing a print job as you describe for 20 minutes and then it comes out would indicate that the machine is waiting for the print driver on the computer to send additional information to continue. Take a look at the print job log to see if you can determine if it is one computer or a particular job that is hanging up. The log gives accepted time and completed time so you should be able to narrow it down.[/QUOTE

They are using kx driver set to pcl 5 we tried setting it set to other languages made no difference.

10 computers print to it and they all report it happening at one point or another.

Machine and computers are all hard wired into network. They print through a server which is in the same building.

The log is a great idea we tried checking the log in the screen but we tried this and they print so much that time we get there they have printed well over a 100 jobs so it's never in the list.

The customer is really hard to work with we tried to tell them to make a diary of file name and time but they are so busy basically all they say is well it was Excel or yeah I printed a report and can never recreate it when we are on site.

They have had us out must be 10 times now and I'm pretty 90% sure it's network related but I need ammo so I can say please stop ringing its nothing to do with the machine.

So there's nothing hardware related that would cause it to pause while it stabilises colour etc? That would happen once a day ��?

It's on the latest firmware and the print driver was the correct one on install 3 years ago using TCP/IP address.

To me if the green light is flashing it's waiting for the job to finish being sent but it's proving to them that's the case as they are adamant it's the machine and they want to terminate contact.

We tried changing the print spooler to only send fully spooled jobs to try and narrow it down and it still does it so to me it's not the sending but it's the machine processing that particular job is the issue.

My 3 options I have now....

Replace machine and be left out of pocket when they say it also does it.
Remove and reinstall print driver.
Sit there for hours maybe days to try and work out what job it is.

All three are a nightmare as it's a big company so IT changes are through an external company in another country.

I think either the machine is really struggling to render what ever is being sent or the machine is stabilising. Any more ideas?

[KYO_OEM]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

maybe Wireshark could be helpfull in this case.
Wireshark * Go Deep.

[jmaister]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

when was the last time fuser was replaced?

remembered going to a couple of jobs for similar complaint. i think the diagnosis later was found by accident to be fuser(or maybe resolved case from the portal pointed to it, cant remember exactly)... It wasnt getting hot enough to the specified temperature, but not cold enough to throw a code. And then the machine just kept on churning...The machine will say its "processing."


got a spare fuser to test out?

[blackcat4866]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Try this: Connect your laptop to the copiers network drop. Figure out what IP the print server is at and start a continuous ping: "ping 192.168.0.200 -t"

Then just watch your ping times. I had a Kyocera that I believe was at the end of a very long drop that ~every 45 seconds the ping skyrocketed to 1000ms and more. The symptoms were "... prints two pages, long wait, prints two pages, then drops the print job."

=^..^=

[fishleg]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

when was the last time fuser was replaced?

remembered going to a couple of jobs for similar complaint. i think the diagnosis later was found by accident to be fuser(or maybe resolved case from the portal pointed to it, cant remember exactly)... It wasnt getting hot enough to the specified temperature, but not cold enough to throw a code. And then the machine just kept on churning...The machine will say its "processing."


got a spare fuser to test out?

Thanks that's a good one I'll try that wouldn't of thought to look at fuser. I haven't tried pinging the server so I'll give that a go from the copiers network point.

It's a very strange one I want to rule out everything before I start losing customers.

I found in the job log the start and completed times you guys mentioned. Is there a way to print this out or log it in some way as it only saves the last 130 jobs so it's very hard to get to this customer in time before all the evidence is gone.

Thanks again been a massive help.

[blackcat4866]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

If you can view the log in the Command Center, from your browser select Print > CutePDF > save as PDF. =^..^=

[fishleg]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Just thought I'd give everyone an update..

Tried fuser - no good
Changed IP - no good
Reinstalled driver - no good

We put in a different machine for a trial just to see what would happen. Would love to know what's causing this problem though I'm guessing SSD or MFP but company won't spend that kinda money on parts to find out.

[blackcat4866]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

All right ... so don't try to ping the network or connect via crossover. I'm sure the company that gets the contract will, then has a chance of solving the issue.

=^..^=

[bsm2]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Install the pcl mini driver and test

mini just sents the data only
nothing else.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

All right ... so don't try to ping the network or connect via crossover. I'm sure the company that gets the contract will, then has a chance of solving the issue.

=^..^=

Doing a continuous ping and connecting with a crossover would seem to be the logical first step. It's simple, fast and when troubleshooting, you always want to eliminate as many possibilities as you can. Also, if there's a poor connection or high network traffic this would explain why the copier is printing slow and continuous ping will show if this is the case.


EDIT: I'd also be sure to rule out if the copier is on a duplicate IP address. You could have some of your print jobs going to a different device.

[fishleg]

Re: TASKalfa 2552ciG(KYOCERA) Utax 3206 intermittent slow printing

Doing a continuous ping and connecting with a crossover would seem to be the logical first step. It's simple, fast and when troubleshooting, you always want to eliminate as many possibilities as you can. Also, if there's a poor connection or high network traffic this would explain why the copier is printing slow and continuous ping will show if this is the case.


EDIT: I'd also be sure to rule out if the copier is on a duplicate IP address. You could have some of your print jobs going to a different device.

We changed the IP address checked with DHCP to see if anything was taking it.

Never tried PCL mini but it's on any document at random times email takes 30 mins to print then same email afterwards takes 1 minute. We did set the driver to pcl5 just to see if that would do anything but it never. We even installed it locally on every pc to rule out the server. I don't think it's driver related just because it's worked for 3 years without issue. I'm guessing pcl mini doesn't have staple or anything like that so they would of burned me alive if I did that.

I personally never witnessed it I could only verify it from the log but another engineer did and he said it basically just sat processing with the green light flashing on the screen for 30 mins to print one page.

Pinged copier on there network no drop outs very low ms.

We exchanged it and have had no issues with the replacement and the other one was doing it atleast daily when it felt like it.

How would you guys have ruled out the network? I did think about putting a router in and blocking all traffic but port 9100 to the copier.

How would you check for high network traffic? It's a fairly small business maybe 30 pcs with a very modern switch. It's been working fine for last 3 years. Forgot to mention we turned off every network protocol we could.