Aficio 2238 - High Color toner consumption,

[andrewdecruz]

Dear friends,
I have had a few cases of Aficio's 2238 that have been consuming a bit too much color toner (CMY) although my customer does not always prints full color pages. I understand that there is a way to control the color toner supply by way of SP Mode 2-224 (Vcnt/Vref). The default value through SP2-224-1 to SP2-224-4 for colors Black, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow is "10". Does lowering this value reduces the supply of toner to the development unit? Thanks in advance

[ruben]

Re: Aficio 2238 - High Color toner consumption,

Don't play around with these values if you don't know what they do.

Let the machine control how much toner it uses, not the customer.

[Polarbear]

Re: Aficio 2238 - High Color toner consumption,

Also understand that even if you don't print a single colour page on a Ricoh MPC, it does "toner refresh" from time to time (as determined by process control), which in essence means that it removes all the toner then present in the dev units (and pumps it to the waste bottle) and replaces it with fresh toner from the bottles.

This means that trying to "save" toner by not using the colours, is actually counter productive, as the machine will "consume" the toner, whether you print with it or not.

Most colour mfps also list percentage coverage in the SMC report, so you can see the coverage that the customer prints.

Had a recent incident where the customer claimed the machine used to much toner. We printed the smc and showed them the coverage percentage (and the customer almost fainted!) Turns out that they were printing sheets with (what looked like) a hessian weave (which eats yellow!) as part of their prints, and the smc proved this!