Ricoh CL4000DN Tint/shading (blue) or splotches (red) on some pages

[jsulliva]

Ricoh CL4000DN with about 60,000 pages. PCUs and transfer belt unit replaced around 50,000. Printer started getting occasional red smears or splotches on pages recently.

Red spots would be 1/4 or less wide by 3/4 inches long or so. No predictable pattern / location or repeat distance.

Then while printing a bunch of pages (est 50-60 pages) for awhile developed a slight blue tint or shading to them. Little more towards the top. Could even see blue tint looking at the stack from the top, which would be outside the normal printable margins.

I have noticed some spilled toner build-up where the toner bottles rest under the top tray, around the little trap doors to the toner bottles. Could this build-up be leaking or spilling into the works below?

Suggestions welcome.
Thank you.

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[qbert69]

Clean your charge rollers in your color PCU's???


....just my 2 cents worth!

[jsulliva]

I don't know how to clean the Charge Rollers - I don't think I saw that covered in the Service Manual that I have. I pulled the PCUs and cleaned (vacuumed) them externally as much as possible, and cleaned inside the printer. Cyan/Blue appeared to be leaking badly and Magenta/Red somewhat, despite only having about 20K pages on them. Prints were clean for about 50 pages and then started getting grubby (blue tint) again.

So I replaced the Magenta/Red and Cyan/blue PCUs and Toner Cartridges; prints look very good now. I hope it lasts. Can you suggest anything I can do to save/rehab not too old PCUs? Darned things are so expensive I hate to toss them seemingly prematurely.

Thank you,
John

[TonerMunkeh]

Unfortunately not. If they're giving you copy quality issues, they've had it. Just bin them and move on. This is the only down side to reasonably large printers, they do take a load of maintenance.

[Iowatech]

Look for a buildup of magenta toner in the machine where where toner isn't supposed to be, where it can fall onto the paper before it reaches the fuser. If you have a toner rated vacuum, vacuum it out.

[jsulliva]

Vacuumed out all the Magenta and Cyan toner that was scattered around and also wiped down the insides as best I could with alcohol on a soft rag. I have a good sized print job to do soon so that will be a good test. Thanks.
John