[CQ] 308 drum and dv life

[Dark Helmet]

Howdy Folks,

Im still pretty new to Kyocera but ive been seeing a trend that the 308 drums or the dv units don't make life. Usually not even close. Every one of these machines i visit are usually puking toner from the DV unit or leaving marks from the drum. They are always very dusted ontop of the DV units.

We have a fair number of these units out there, i have no idea what the former techs in this office were doing to set them up. We run 952 on them before they go out the door.

Any words of wisdom on how to get these guys running better / lasting longer or do the supplies just suck?

These machines have fantastic accessory options and don't really look like a bad box.

Thanks

[ihatefinishers13]

The only real weak point on the 308's is the drum and DV units. Drums get dash marks, that eventually causes the mag rollers to get dirty, and then come off on the drum you just replaced... You could try lowering the energy save settings to less than 5 minutes, so the fuser doesn't stay as hot; some think it may help the drum units stay cooler and not get those dash marks from the charge rollers. From what a tech on the hotline told me, they probably used cheaper material and figured that they would make enough profit off of them to still profit in the end.

For the 5 years we sold Kyocera, and the 9 years I've been here still servicing them, they're solid machines and we rarely have to touch them. When we do though, it's for dumb reasons like this, or because something was cheaply designed such as cheap plastic feed detection levers on the P6235 series. The Drum/DV issues on the 306/307/308 series have been an issue from day 1 back in 2016. Good luck.

[Lunatech]

Only a few times have I seen a drum last to life expectancy. Usually around one half. Developing units last as long as they should most of the time for us. Are you using OEM toner? We only use OEM.

[Samanator]

I can also say from experience that using aftermarket toner makes these little machines dust like crazy. I also think it helps put marks on the drums early.

I have started resetting the energy saver time to 5 minuets over the last year on all my 306ci, 356ci, 406ci, 308ci, 408ci, & 508ci and that seems to help.

When I arrived at this company they were using aftermarket toner exclusivity. They were also having a lot of service calls for copy/print quality. It took losing many drum units in the larger (xx52ci) machines due to toner clumping up in the drum unit. This would cause auger to brake rendering the drum unit useless. They also lost a few developer units that just went bad for various reasons.

My point is, using aftermarket toner on Kyocera machines (A3s and A4s) will cost you more money in service than you are saving on toner.

[Dark Helmet]

We are owned by Kyocera so only use the good stuff. There is a bulletin for the dash marks, you update firmware and change U100 Aging to a 1 and apparently it changes the cleaning performance or something.

I was hoping we were doing something wrong but it sounds like its just the way these things are.