What's in your toolbox?

[skarilla1]

I've been a copier tech for 3 years and have my standard set of tools but was wondering what everyone else has in their toolbox? Any extra handy little gadgets or supplies that you find you use often?

[blackcat4866]

It's going to depend a lot on what equipment you're working on. Here are a few of the gadgets I use fairly regularly:


This is a tire press, for removing Konica Minolta rollers form their hubs, and placing them on Kyocera hubs:
36198

This is a pin press for removing a broken roll pin from the drum drive shaft of a Toshiba eS455, then press in a new pin:
361993620036202

This is an extra heavy duty spring hook that works quite nicely on fuser pressure springs. You may have noticed that the regular spring hook (lower one in the picture) tends to bend and straighten:
36201

This is the Giottos Air Rocket. It's a blower for cleaning sensors. Having ruined a few sensors, I found an alternate to refrigerant:
36203

I've made quite a number of drive handles. Most for developing units (which can be difficult to turn), but I've also made handles like this one to drive Sharp primary transfer belt (to prime the surface of the belt):
36204

This one is kind of unique. There was a Sharp model that wore out the developing unit drive gear on the inner frame. I could sometimes reach the yellow one, but my fat arms would not let me reach the others. This tool is ~24" long, made from copper plumbing parts. You can see the spare gear fitted into the tool for installation. This tool works for both removal and installation. It's spring loaded to hold the gear while you're lining it up:
3620536206

You'll get plenty of opportunities to invent for your own purposes. =^..^=

[Tonerbomb]

A lot of AutoMajical Wizardry....Stuff.......................

[KenB]

I once took a pair of meter leads, and soldered a sewing needle onto the end of each to give them a nice, sharp point.

I then put some heat shrink tubing over the solder joint.

Those leads were sharp enough to pierce the insulation on a wire without damaging it, as well as getting into some very tight connectors where normal tips are too big to get a connection.

To keep them covered (and to not poke myself, mostly), I kept a chunk of pencil eraser on the tip when not in use; that also cleaned the point each time I took the eraser off.

[JR2ALTA]

zip ties saved me in macgyver sitatuions.

carry a various sized pvc tubing to cheat door locks. folding up paper is risky.

carry some sharp self-tapping screws for when you need to drill into plastic (again macgyver)

[Iowatech]

I had an extra set of tweakers that I filed the tips to a sharp edge. I used them to bore small holes in plastic, like when a sensor flag was broken off and I needed to replace it with locally available materials (paperclip or something).

If you ever have a tough cleaning job, you might want to get a "Mr. Clean Magic Eraser", I even used them to get the toner coating off of developer rollers in older Ricohs. Don't use them on painted or teflon surfaces though. I tried that, stupid and wrong things happened next.

I don't know if your toolkit is large enough for this, but I carried a forty sheet document feeder test stack with page numbers (actually I used Ricoh's background numbering function so that the numbers appeared all over each page and were really easy to see). While I suppose manufacturer's official test originals would work the best for that, prints of those originals on decent paper tended worked OK for me. My stack was duplexed, and there were 20 color prints and twenty black and white prints. That makes easy work of determining whether the machine is malfunctioning or the customer's originals are outside of the machine's capabilities. I may have come up with the quantity of 40 from back in the analog days, but I was pretty young back then and I don't remember for sure anymore.

[Phil B.]

zip ties saved me in macgyver sitatuions.

carry a various sized pvc tubing to cheat door locks. folding up paper is risky.

carry some sharp self-tapping screws for when you need to drill into plastic (again macgyver)

" carry a various sized pvc tubing to cheat door locks. "
I use a section of an old rubber wiper blade for cheating door switches

I carry Nu Finish car polish to polish up charge rollers
I use Rain Ex on mirrors in a very dusty or high ozone areas.. keeps the purple build up off

Hemostats for all sorts of issues... 13" shaft 5mm socket for MOST screws
plenty of electrical tape and rubbing alcohol for removing gum from worn out pads on plate solenoids.

I have a separate tool bag for Xerox and FP mailing because they use torx drivers and other special tools Along with drill bits when I have to install the gear drive fix kit on the wax Xerox models

[hptech34]

I took a trip to the women's cosmetics at Walmart and picked up some cotton swabs. Their great for holding rubber cleaning solution and breaks thru the toner on rollers and cleans them up very well. I mainly work on HP's and Lexmark printers and faxes so a necessity is a # 2 screw driver for taking out swing plate screws ( the 4 little black ones that always strip) I have a standard size and a long handle. I also make sure to carry a hand set wherever I go. I never know when I need to check a phone line.

[KenB]

A letter size sheet of black construction paper is a good alternative to making skyshots when required.

With the cover closed, you don't get all that toner being wasted and dumped into the non-image areas.