Bizhub C3533 - Prints Poorly on Polyester Paper (new) prints fine on paper

[dditzler]

I am not a recent copier tech but I did taking training decades ago for laser printers and scanners. I have been around computers and printing for a long time.

I have a lightly used Bizhub C353 and when I picked it up it only had 7,500 prints on it. All the consumables were listed at 100% and it printed beautifully. I've been experimenting with Polyester waterproof "paper". I like the Nekoosa brand but I've tried the Xerox Never Tear product too. Up until last week it was working well. Today I really noticed a problem with a solid background fill.

Still, at the moment, most of the consumables are good and nothing that I noticed changed in the environment where the machine is (temp, humidity, etc).

Obviously looking at these, the thicker the media the more I had a problem. I did include a scan of a print I did a few months ago on the Nekoosa 8mil and it was working beautifully. I was able to do full color prints on 12x18 all the way to the margin on both sides a fe months ago.

All the consumables still have lots of life in them and it still prints well on paper, even 270 GSM thick stock so I am unsure what to do next. Also this problem almost appeared overnight. I literally printed a few documents that looked great and the next one was faded at the beginning of the image and it has never printed on that well again. My first guess might be the fuser but that looks good to me when looking inside the machine. Everything is very clean in this machine and I took the plastic off the keypad when I brought it home. It is obviously older though. I think it went in service in 2009.

I am open to ideas or if you know of a good tech in the Chicago area I would love their contact info too.

thanks again.

-david

[Tech Helpdesk]

Hi there,

The first problem you have is that these devices are plain paper copier/printers and if it works fine on paper there is no problem, so any success you may have had in the past printing on polyester count as a blessing.

There are so many variables such as what toner are you using, the condition of the imaging units, the condition of the transfer belt and roller.

Does the machine print heavy solids of C,M,Y,K onto paper ok ?

My recommendation is to get an engineer to look at your machine, but as with all unsupported stocks you may not get the answer you like.

Good luck

[copier addict]

Have you tried printing using thick paper settings?

[Setright]

Thick paper or try the "Labels" setting.


Also, consider using a polyester media designed for digital print, like Afga Synaps XM.

If you keep your toner coverage below 200% you will get good results. If you push it and hit the machine max coverage of 240% you are likely to get trails of wax on the printouts. This is because the wax that makes up the toner has nowhere to go - unlike with paper, where it can be absorbed.

[Woxner]

I have seen mfp board do that. also hv bd its a crap shoot. But if paper looks ok make sure to change the paper setting to the right stock

[wseyller]

I get these all the time. Sales test the media on xyz model as says it will work without taking attention to media specifications of the machine. Manufacturers create specifications on a device that is based on it working in the conditions that they specify. Once outside of those conditions they can't guarantee it. Those conditions can sometimes be fixed by certain replacement of parts. Sometimes it is environmental and requires fixing temperature and humidity of the device and the consumables such as the media itself.

With that said, sometimes the device can actually run media outside of the specifications of the device until either components of the device gradually wear or the environment changes. But the manufacturer can't guarantee then do to many other variables. They can only guarantee based on the conditions that they specify.

Once I had a sales person promise a customer that they could print on the indestructible weather proof paper that Konica Minolta does not approve of. Hell, this stuff you could not even rip it with your bare hands. Of course the issue did not occur until a few months after the sales person moved on to a different career.