ARBC320 poor copy quality.

[bdcrandall13]

b.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110127_171942_002.jpgb.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110127_171942_004.jpgb.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110127_171942_001.jpgb.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110127_171942_003.jpgHave changed DV drive gears, color drums, color toners and transfer belt. I attached some scans of copies. It does it when printing and copying. User is trying to print with a green image and it does not make green well at all. It looks as if both yellow and cyan are contributing to the problem but i am stuck from here. No techs here have much experience on these POS machines. Any input is appreciated.
Thanks

[Silvertoast]

dont see any attachments. but there is a adjustment screw in the front and back for each color to adjust the heads up and down if they are not adjusted correctly have ur copy will have the correct color mix and the other have will be lacking a color or be very faint.

the front one is very easy to get to and has a green arrow stiker next to it ( cant remember if it is pointing to or away from the screw)
the rear one u have to remove the rear cover and u can see holes in the frame that alow acces to the screws

[bdcrandall13]

OK, havent tried that yet. Is there a section in the service manual that goes over that? I just attched the pictures on my previous post. You can see the yellow and cyan fade, Black and magenta are crisp boxes all the way across. You can really see the problems with the green. You can also see the cyan and yellow leaving marks in the grey on the sharp test page also. It is odd that it only leaves the marks when there is actually print and no defects anywhere else on the page. Usually if it is a drum or belt you will notice the defects throughout the page. Makes me wonder if it is something else like you mentioned.

[Silvertoast]

adj 3 section 8-6 8-7 in the service manual

[OMD-227]

I've had a lot of experience with the Whale series.

I wouldn't touch the LED focus screws with those samples, as the solids are quite good. You can cause more problems than you need, as well as alot of time wasted if you start mucking around with the LED focus adjustments if you haven't done it before. Its very touchy & quite tricky to get right. 99% of the time, you dont need to touch that adjustment, as its either a drum, toner or LED issue.

Thats my next point.....

If your drums & toners are good, I can see that the yellow LED in particular needs a really good clean. That is usually the LED that causes the most problems, as well as image quality problems like this, because its right next to the fuser, and toner tends to get 'baked' onto the LED surface, causing a poor discharge of the drum surface in areas affected the most.
You need to take all drum units, toner & belt unit out, get a cloth with a soft cleaning solvent and really wipe the LED surface quite hard (dont worry, they are spring loaded). You will see alot of toner residue come off them, especially the yellow LED.
Dry the LED's really well. Then reassemble & run a full colour calibration as normal.

This will come up really good. Even with that being said, a faulty toner will still do similar issues of weird faded prints, even if the MG roller looks really good. The toners are a crazy design, and you often have alot of problems with them.
Plus the fact its a low-res LED machine, not a fine dpi laser.

[blackcat4866]

Use caution if your going to try the LED skew & focus adjustments.

Start with four new cartridges. Read the manual carefully, and make very small adjustments. I've done these adjustments many times, and you'll spend at least two hours, and the image quality may even look better when your done.

See how much improvement there is with new cartridges. =^..^=

[OMD-227]

Use caution if your going to try the LED skew & focus adjustments.

Start with four new cartridges. Read the manual carefully, and make very small adjustments. I've done these adjustments many times, and you'll spend at least two hours, and the image quality may even look better when your done.

See how much improvement there is with new cartridges. =^..^=

Yeah mate...... completely agree.
Still give the LED units a good clean, as the samples above show yellow to be most faded. This is common, even when using genuine supplies.

[bdcrandall13]

Thanks guys. Will give it a try today!

[bdcrandall13]

Ok... I cleaned the LED's. It did seem to help the yellow. Although now everything seems to have more of a yellowish color. See the attachments. The grey looks especially bad. The cyan seems to be more of the problem though. The customer tried to print their green images and it still looks similar to before, not much better if better at all.
We started out by cleaning the LED's, then swapped all cartridges. Recalibrated copy and print. Not much change except in yellow. Then replaced drums. Calibrated again. No noticable change. We then changed the color definition and calibrated. No change except everything was more of a blue tint. I also attached a copy of the 22-6. Any additional input is appreciated!
Thanks


b.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110128_180728.pdf
b.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110128_180759.pdf
b.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110128_180728.pdf
b.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110128_180759.pdf

[blackcat4866]

On the first file:
You may be able to improve focus on magenta & black. The yellow color registration is off. Maybe try the bias & charge adjustment? You'll need the pigtails that plug into the board. =^..^=

[OMD-227]

I knew cleaning the LED's would help somewhat, especially the yellow.

We dont have the 320 machine of the Whale series here in Australia, only going as high as the ARC262M (which is the model before yours). Judging by the 22-6 prints, your firmware is very old. Even on our 260 & 262M machines, the firmware versions are much higher on virtually all items. There is a firmware upgrade a few years ago to help with overtoning yellow. I would highly recommend a firmware upgrade. Firmware upgrading a Whale is annoying, with the use of a level converter device, plugged into the ICU board. If you need some instructions on this, let me know. I'm sure its the same procedure on the 320 as it is for the rest of the Whales.

Another thing I've noticed is the amount of F2 codes recorded. The majority of the F2 codes you have are related to halftone correction. This is done in the Transfer Belt Unit, as it contains the process control/halftone sensor. Are these still there from before you changed the transfer belt or coming up now?
Have you calibrated the transfer belt sensors with the ID sensor jig? (part number CPLTM6305FC01) Sim 44-13. This definitely helps with getting a better grey.

With the LED's cleaned, new drum units, toners & transfer belt, fully color calibrated and the problem is still there, print out the LED focus/skew pages in 61-04. You can print out each color separately, while working just on that color. Attach those prints.

Make sure the optics/mirrors are spotless. I've always found that helps alot with the Whales. The MX colors dont matter as much as they compensate for a minor level of dusty optics.

The samples from your machine are OK, just abit out of focus. I have to tell you that you'll never get this machine copying/printing perfectly. There will always be a slight issue that only you as a tech notice, but the client wouldnt pick.

[bdcrandall13]

OK. I did attached a bunch of pictures to let you see whats going on. We cleaned the LED's and we tried to focus the lasers as best that we could and got some good results using 61-4. I posted a before photo and yellow, cyan and black were way off. We got them to look just like magenta which is almost perfect. We also recalibrated after we got done. Yellow seems to still be dominating the other colors in most copies/prints. If you look at the grey patch on the test sheet it has a yellow tint. There is also small cyan lines in it. Not sure if I can do anything for that.
When you look at the test prints with the small boxes both yellow and cyan end in different spots. This causes the green to come out wrong. The customer is printing something with a green background so i cant hide it.
One other thing i noticed is when printing a test pattern of solid yellow or cyan it had a series of marks along the lead edge. I attached samples of that as well. You can really see it when looking at the green solid test pattern.

laser focus before.jpgafter adjust.jpgb.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110203_203133_007.jpgb.crandall@officesolutionsinc.biz_20110203_203133_008.jpg

[OMD-227]

I have to congratulate you on getting it as good as it currently is.

As I've said before, you are going to struggle getting this good enough for your picky client. What you have got right now is about as good as you'll get, even with brand new consumables & being fully calibrated, with focus & skew adjusted.

The only thing left to do, is calibrate the ID sensor with the jig to give you a better shot at a proper grey. Otherwise, I've gotta say, what you have now is really, really good for that machine. Trust me. You'll go crazy trying to get this better than what it is now.

If you notice the solid green page, you'll see the lead edge is more solid than the rest of the page. That distance of darker area is one rotation of the mag roller on the toner cartridge, and its the cyan toner that is causing that. You can just see it in the solid cyan page. This is totally normal. I've seen that alot. Cant get any better without changing cartridges..... yet again.

[jprecht]

Hi, when you say you "recalibrated" did you mean your "procon ast. or "forced procon" sim 44' 2 or 4 ? also hows your humidity level around the box? down here in the gulf coast we have ALOT of transfer issues esp wth color toners. Hopefully you r using oem As This box has "issues" wth aftermarket toners. I have had some interesting "variances" with these "junkers" especially with "fill".
Frankly I like "wazzas" response, and this box is NOT going to give you the DPI your cust probably wants, without everything new /oem /ect. Wishing you the best!!! jBear

[bdcrandall13]

While working on this yesterday and adjusting the focus for over an hour, getting it to where it was almost spot on, then printing the green test patch and there being no change made me realize that I may not get it any better. I have an ARBC260 here in my office that we use as a BW printer that is actually worse off than this one it. When looking at the Sharp color test chart print i noticed that the color exposure boxes are filled pretty good on the 1st line. From what I remember from training on the MX series is the bottom line, number 7, should not be copied at all. Can I manually tone down the exposure? How difficult is that? I might be able to get somewhere by just turning down yellow as well, that may help the grey turn out better anyway.
I had a former longtime tech just email me this morning about this and mentioned that it could be a memory issue as well. Any thoughts on that?
Thanks again guys for all the help.