Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

[JayPaul]

Hi Guys, I posted about this a couple of years ago and amongst all the suggestions I never really found the answer. Maybe now it has started happening to other people and there may be new light to shed.
So we run a system called PIPS that sends us meter readiongs/toner levels etc. We have all customers set so when toner gets to 20% it messages us and we send that toner out to customer, simple enough.
Except on nearly all of our MPC 305/306/307/406/407 even the IMC 300 and now a new IMC530 has just done it. The toners can go anything from 30-90% to 0% in the blink of an eye. Now I realise our system is just sending us the info directly from the machine so PIPS is not the problem, the machine is. Please tell me this has happened to someone else, it is killing us the amount of calls we get from customers saying they run out and do not have a spare toner.
Ricoh told me that this hasn't happened to anyone else they know of, which to me is ludicrous when it happens to so many of our machines. I am the person who sets them up and installs them and I definitely do not tamper with any settings to do with toner. I have tried experimenting with different firmware levels but still keeps happening.
The only other thing I can start blaming is the toner (and chip) as we don't always buy the toners directly from Ricoh as they make the prices so expensive, we buy 'genuine' toners from a different source. We never buy anything that is marketed as compatible as I am totally against those ones.
The other weird thing about this is that occasionally I go out to the customer myself and drop off a new toner, sometimes the bottle that suddenly ran out is actually totally empty and sometimes there is still some left in it. Unfortunately on this little colour machine, the toners only look half full when new and look about quarter full when they 'run out' so it is difficult just by looking to know how much percentage is actually left in them.
Any one who has seen this please help me. We can't be the only dealer suffering with this.
Thanks

[davel]

[dalewb74]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

‘Genuine’ toners from another source cheaper than Ricoh? I think you are being scammed.

i agree. have you tried toners from ricoh to see if you get the same results? that would tell you right away if you are being scammed....

[JayPaul]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

If I thought they were really genuine I would not write them as 'genuine'. I know they aren't the real deal but convincing my office and accounts to spend almost double on toners for experiments only ends one way, not my way.
I already know that Ricoh started changing things within the firmware a couple of years ago that recognises non genuine toner chips and says they are 'incompatible with this machine or incorrect model toner' as we have seen that a few times, mostly on the IMC 3000-6000 machines.
In terms of copy quality and drums/dev, we never really get any issues like people do with toners that are literally sold as 'compatible' but it's very likely these 'genuine' toners are causing some of the faults.
Again though we buy from a company in the UK called Data Direct and they are quite big and must supply toners to quite a lot of dealers, but it seems like literally nobody else ever gets this problem.

[Gift]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Well I can say I had this problem quite a lot with the MPC307, too:

Toner levels dropped from >20-30% to zero and especially our fleet customers had to suffer because we didn't sent spare in time like as promised in our contracts. Usually our fleet triggers an alert @20% or lower remaining toner but we received a lot of alerts stating that the MPC already displays "toner low" condition. Back then I talked to ricoh and they claimed this "crappy remaining toner calculation" is not a known issue. I tried to keep the FW up to date and over time I actually had the impression that things started to improve and I received less calls about this. Well, it's also possible that this improvement is archieved because several (well, most..) MPC307 customers got an extra-spare toner set from us. In these cases we are basicly sending replacement for spare toners. We always use original toners.

I didn't noticed this problem with the IMC300 (yet^^) and back in the MPC305 days we had a lot of units with toner hopper issues. A faulty hopper can cause a toner end message if it doesn't deliver the toner to the dev unit but in this case the bottle isn't really empty. I think there are bulletings/modifications available for the MPC305 about this topic.

[slimslob]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

The % toner levels are based on what is computed and stored on the cartridge chips. The problem with after market toner cartridges is that you have no guarantee that they initially have the proper amount of toner. If they are 20% short, the low toner, 17%, will not come on.

[Gift]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

The % toner levels are based on what is computed and stored on the cartridge chips. The problem with after market toner cartridges is that you have no guarantee that they initially have the proper amount of toner. If they are 20% short, the low toner, 17%, will not come on.

As from my experience this is not an aftermarket toner problem since we don't buy any compatible stuff for ricoh.

Buying ricoh toner from established distributors isn't uncommon in certain countries in wich ricoh tries to rip off dealers
Of course you should take care that you only buy what fits in your market region.

[slimslob]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Check the setting of SP 3101-001 and SP 3101-002. Default for both is 0. If either is set to 1, it can cause this problem.

[Gift]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Check the setting of SP 3101-001 and SP 3101-002. Default for both is 0. If either is set to 1, it can cause this problem.

I'll have a look, thanks

[JayPaul]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Yes I remember the troubles of the MPC 305 toner problems. We used to find the id board at the back could sometimes go faulty, the hoppers had problems and even the little locking mechanisms could cause problems if someones rammed the toner in like there was no tomorrow.
We try to give a lot of customers a spare set now once they have had the 40-0% thing happen but still I'd love to find the exact cause of it one day because nearly every problem has some kind of fix to it.

[Gift]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Yes I remember the troubles of the MPC 305 toner problems. We used to find the id board at the back could sometimes go faulty, the hoppers had problems and even the little locking mechanisms could cause problems if someones rammed the toner in like there was no tomorrow.
We try to give a lot of customers a spare set now once they have had the 40-0% thing happen but still I'd love to find the exact cause of it one day because nearly every problem has some kind of fix to it.

Since ricoh never put out a stement I think there's only guesswork. Like I said I have the impression that this problem reduced itself over time - we didn't do anything besides updating firmware. A possible fix is that ricoh did improve the algorythm or a possible cause might be that we bought toner from a differnet market region with less toner/grams. Back then I started documenting things like the netto weight of the toners - unfortunetely I can't find that stuff anymore.

If that's still a big issue on your end despite having the units running with mostly up to date FW I'd buy a set of toner from ricoh and compare the noter netto weight with the toner in your stock.

[slimslob]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Yes I remember the troubles of the MPC 305 toner problems. We used to find the id board at the back could sometimes go faulty, the hoppers had problems and even the little locking mechanisms could cause problems if someones rammed the toner in like there was no tomorrow.
We try to give a lot of customers a spare set now once they have had the 40-0% thing happen but still I'd love to find the exact cause of it one day because nearly every problem has some kind of fix to it.

And usually changing SP 3101-001 to 1 allowed the machine to be usable while you waited for parts.It then relied on the toner sensor to determine when the cartridge went empty, no low toner warning.

[JayPaul]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

3101-001 Is that the one where the toner indicators all go to full straight away as if they are all new toners? If so I have used that years ago on old MPC2500 type machines to get out of problems. More recently on models such as the 307 I have used it on call outs where toner runs out but it is still 'half full' so turn that SP on, all toners show as 100% restart machine let print jobs come out, turn SP mode back off and turn off and on again, suddenly toner level goes back to its original state of 40% as if the problem never happened. It is handy having that option from time to time if there is still toner in the bottles

[Batman1976]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

Hi Chaps,

I also experience the same issue on our fleet of MPC307/407/IM300/400 devices. You can try adjusting the toner near end threshold via SP mode this will give you a bit more notice at toner near end before the cartridge runs out. Keep firmware levels up to date.

The only information I got out of the Ricoh around this issue is as follows:

The MPC306/307/407/IMC300/400 use one motor to drive all toner cartridges. So if a user sends a black & white print job to the machine it will turn all toner bottles regardless if C,M,Y is not being laid down on the image surface. This then gives a false reading onto the chip that the toner has been used. Still doesn't explain the drop from 30/40% to 0% though. But does make sense that incorrect toners levels are being reported on any remote reporting software.

Cheers
Batman1976

[JayPaul]

Re: Toners suddenly running out with no warning on 305/306/307/imc 300

It has been years having this problem, so frustrating when it started happening on IMC 300/400 as well, which means the problem will continue for many more years.
I never get answers to anything though, why do some like my office get this problem a lot, but other dealerships and Ricoh apparently never have it happen to them?
I have tried so many things over the years. Someone told me it has to be on the latest firmware version, so I went to a customer who has MPC 307 and only does about 1,000 pages a month. They had never had a problem, but I went there and updated firmware any way to prevent it from happening, literally 10 days later the magenta went from 40% to empty. For me that basically ruled out updating firmware for this specific problem.
Adjusting SP modes for toner levels never achieves anything, making double sure toners are OEM never achieves anything, different firmware levels never achieves anything.
We have someone that works here who is essentially just here to cut down spending on anything and everything, yet even they had to agree we have to send spare sets of toners out for these models. Got so tired of having to drop my work load, just to deliver a toner to a customer 40 mins away because it goes from 40% to 0 in the blink of an eye (we send toners out when they hit 20%)
...and if you think oh why don't you just up the 20% threshold to 40%... we have had them drop from as high as 70% to 0 in some cases.
The toners turning during mono prints and yet still counting them sounds like the biggest design flaw in all of Ricohs history. There must be more to it than that, what is a customer had MPC 307 and printed 100 colour pages for every 8000 mono pages, wouldn't the machine keep asking for colour toners even though they were still 90% full?!
If anyone actually has a real cure for this I'll sing your praises til the end of my career here.