Prematurely Fuser Failure and Sleep and Low Power Time

[Samanator]

I posted this elsewhere but I thought it needed its own string. So I’m just going to throw this out there for some to think about in regard to fusers prematurely going out.

Over the last maybe 20 years, I have worked for a few different companies and on different manufactures machines. I have noticed on just about all the machines I encounter with prematurely fuser failure have low power and sleep settings were always maxed out. That max setting is usually 240 minutes on just about all machines I have encountered.

IMHO that means if the last person touched the machine just before closing, the machine just sat there and baked for the next four hours before going into some kind of shut down. I think even with magnetic induction the machine wants to keep the roller or belt at a certain temp. And it seemed worse when machines all had halogen lamps in the fuser. They would bake and bake. After a couple of years, the plastic would be brittle and heat-stressed around the fuser area. Also, the machine is going to be constantly turning the fuser over that period of time. Even if it’s not heating it, it's cycling, it’s moving for no real reason at all. That can’t be good.

I have always set the machines under my care to 60 minuet sleep / 90 minute low power or 90/120 and never had a customer complain that the machine turns off all the time. I have a lot fewer fuser problems than some I talk with. The main exception is the early Kyocera TA xxx2 series fusers that to me were junk. To me, Konica makes one of the best fusers out there. When I worked for a Konica dealer was when I really noticed prematurely fuser failure on machines set to a 240-minuet shutdown time.

There are other reasons for fuser failure, but my point is that it seems to me to max out low power and sleep setting because one doesn't want to hear a customer complained about the machine shutting itself off during the middle of the day is a very lazy and expensive fix.

Granted, this is my opinion and maybe some food for thought.

[slimslob]

My experience is that many machines that have separate Main Power switch and Front panel power button have settings for each day of the week that allow you to set power on and off times for the engine. Set those for 15 minutes after closing time. If someone is in the middle of a large job it will allow that job to complete and then shutdown. And most workers don't want to stick around after closing time, part of the reason they don't take time to shut the machine down.