AF 551 add toner message

[totoro]

This seems to be my week for Ricoh problems. I went to this machine and the copies were way overtoned. The customer said this happened when they put in a new toner bottle. The machine asked for toner 3-4 times before the message went away. I arrived and went to detone the copier and after about 200 sky shots the copies started to look decent. Then the add toner message comes on. The toner bottle is new and is Ricoh brand toner. I took the bottle ass. apart and cleaned it, changed the developer because it was just over 300k, and changed the motor /clutch ass on the advice of another tech. It still seems as if there is no toner going into the developer ass.. I can move the bottle ass. away and look into the dev ass. and not see any toner. I even manually added toner to the dev ass. 3 times and the paddles push it into the system and it asks for more. What am I missing? TIA Toto

[Wishbone]

I could be the toner supply motor in the neck of the toner assy. They usually make a load mooing sound right before they go out. Have you cheated the door and verifyied the toner bottle is turning? You can check that in output checks.

[Jimbo1]

About that neck. If it is not full when you start with the toner the machine assumes the bottle is empty and keps trying to add toner.
I found this out the hard way when I had one completely empty. You can check by taking the toner sensor off the neck and you can cheat the door and actually squeeze it between your fingers because it is a pressure sensor.

If it is good it will quit asking for toner. You will have to manually fill that neck or bell or whatever you want to call it. Be careful.

[totoro]

I have cheated the door an dcan see the toner bottle turning. I only have 2 machines like this so I don't have a lot of experience with these. I did not know that the sensor was a pressure sensor. I will go back Monday morning and try what you said. If I fill the neck manually and the sensor is good, will I have to re-initialize the td sensor?

Thanx Totoro

[imaginemoko]

try to verify toner motor supply at toner bottle holder... or its gear perhaps its already broken.. check its mechanical output... try o recon the toner bottle holder....

[Jimbo1]

No. That sensor is the toner end sensor andtaht is why it is trying to add toner because it doesn't know any is there.

[joher]

i also agree with jambo1,,,,,, you shud do this prectic problum will be solved,

[schooltech]

Yes, do an output check on the bottle motor and see if it is beginnning to bind. 5-804 for the output section and scroll to the toner motor.

Make sure that the toner shudder is not broken and it is sitting behind the cover tab. It is easy to take out the toner hopper and make sure that everything is physically ok inside the unit.

[totoro]

Well, I manually filled the toner hopper until the add toner message went away. The copies where overtoned to the point that the third copy got stuck in the fuser and left gobs of toner on the fuser rollers. I took out the toner bottle to try and detone the machine and was able to run about ten half sky shots before the add toner message came back and I'm back where i started. Could it be a bad TD sensor, or am I missing something else?

P.S. When i was manully adding toner, at some point toner was actually falling out of the dev. ass. into the copier.

[Jimbo1]

You know that sounds like ou might have a cracked housing and maybe the TD sensor is nad or it's just not seeing enough because it's losing it first.

Can you swap that DV wiht another to see if the problem goes away? This could be a logic situation as well.

[totoro]

I have the dev.ass. on order. I'll let you know. Thanx

[Wishbone]

In the mean time you can bypass the td sensor by putting the machine in pixel count. If it works properly then without asking for toner you know your td sensor is bad.

[totoro]

I already tried putting it into pixel count. Another tech said to redo developer and put a new drum in and to reinit the id and td sensor with the toner hopper full. I am waiting for parts and will post the results. Thanx Totoro

[totoro]

Hi Guys,

Here's waht I did to fix this problem. I changed : drum, dev ass. toner clutch, and toner bottle holder. None of these fixed the problem alone. I changed the developer one more time ( 3rd ) ran td initialize and made sure that the toner hopper was full to the top and left the toner bottle in. This time the copier came to ready and the copies were not overtoned.
Every other time I did this, I manually filled the hopper and left the toner bottle out as I didn't want the dev. to be overtoned. I think that the original problem was that the toner bottle went empty and the bottle holder was not putting toner into the hopper fast enough. This meant that the toner end sensor was always looking for toner. I thought that the toner end and the td sensor were not supposed to affect one another like that, but I don't know. If the toner end sensor in the hopper is looking for toner the machine shouldn't be adding whats's left of the toner in the hopper to the dev. Should it? I'm confused, but at least after 2 wks the machine works.
What do you think?

Totoro

[cobiray]

I skimmed through the rest of the posts, so if I misunderstood I apologize. The only time I've seen the sub hopper be packed full of toner and the add toner message is when the toner drive clutch has failed or is week. This seems to be a common problem in my experience. Sometimes turning the sub hopper by hand and re installing will temporarily fix it, but most times it returns and needs the clutch replaced. Another thing, the last time I checked the clutch isn't available separately and comes with the drive assembly (gears, framework, clutch).