White lines @ magenda 3551ci

[BillyCarpenter]

Customers are the hardest thing to fix. The majority of my customers are good and that's the way it's been at any placed that I worked for. But then here's how I'd break down the problem ones.


1. Assholes - no explanation needed.

2. Dumb - No matter how much training you give them, 2 day later they act is if they've never heard that before.

3. Technical Wizards. - These people think that they know more than the tech. They'll try to tell us how to do our job or they don't believe us when we tell them something. Some may try to work on the machines themselves. They usually cause a lot of damage by sticking a letter opener in the fuser to remove a jam or something along those lines.

It's the part of the job that I hate the most.


Rant over.

[BillyCarpenter]

I don't feel like starting a new thread so I'm gonna post this here.


You can read all the service manuals you want, but NOTHING takes the place of experience. Many of the problems I'm seeing, I'm seeing for the first time. And most of them look different from the old days. I've seen failing DV units many times. Can't recall one that ever left the finite white lines like I posted in the previous example. The only reason I suspected the DV unit was the swirling white void areas.

Today I ran into a failing transfer belt for the first time. I was able to identify that almost right away because it was affecting all the colors, but still it was my first time seeing one fail. For the most part I see the same problems over and over and that's kind of boring, but at this point boring is good.


See failing transfer belt below:


doc00001020210225205432.pdf


20210225_195646.jpg

[BBM]

The transfer belts seem to hold up well and it seems when they start to get a bit "rough and scaly" is when we start having issues with them.

[BillyCarpenter]

I cut the transfer belt off of an old unit and the backside of the belt looks totally different than the top side. It appears to me that the top side has a rubbery coating that is applied to the belt.



I'll preface what I'm about to say: I don't have enough experience on these machines as of yet, but I've noticed that sometimes a streaky belt doesn't really affect the prints. But on the picture that I posted above, that pattern showed up on every page. I didn't try to clean the belt...I replaced it. I have that belt at the shop and I may try to clean it just to see if it will work. I have no idea if it will.

What's been everyone's experience on a streaky belt?

[blackcat4866]

What's been everyone's experience on a streaky belt?

Regardless of what you use to clean it, you have to do 200+ prints to clear the streakyness. I was not satisfied with the results and probably will not repeat it on the Kyocera rubbery belts. I would probably try an orange oil based cleaner followed by an alcohol wash.

tmaged claims that the Blow Off branded cleaner works, but I don't have personal experience to confirm that. Maybe worth buying a couple of cans just to see what happens?:
https://www.amazon.com/Blow-Off-2222.../dp/B000V6T5BI

I'll be interested in your results. =^..^=

[BillyCarpenter]

Regardless of what you use to clean it, you have to do 200+ prints to clear the streakyness. I was not satisfied with the results and probably will not repeat it on the Kyocera rubbery belts. I would probably try an orange oil based cleaner followed by an alcohol wash.

tmaged claims that the Blow Off branded cleaner works, but I don't have personal experience to confirm that. Maybe worth buying a couple of cans just to see what happens?:
https://www.amazon.com/Blow-Off-2222.../dp/B000V6T5BI

I'll be interested in your results. =^..^=

I removed the cleaning bar/pad and blade from the transfer unit. I blew out the unit with an air compressor. I then cleaned the belt with a rag and water. That did nothing to remove the black streaks. I then cleaned a small area with a rag and alcohol. That quickly took the gray rubber coating down the the underneath black surface.


I think what's happening with this belt in particular is that the the cleaning blade wears down the gray rubber surface and over time/use it becomes thinner and thinner. I'm gonna install the belt in a bit and see if any of this made a difference.

[BillyCarpenter]

Well, the test pages look better but not good enough. My final opinion is to not clean/rub the belt itself. You can clean the blade, cleaning roller and pad and blow it off. Other than that, I think it's a waste of time and may do more harm than good.

PS - I do recommend to periodically clean the cleaning roller and pad. Especially the pad. I found a lot of crud under the pad and I believe it's creating wear lines on the belt.

Edit: Quick note. When I checked U465/Stress, the rear reading was 1945 and that's where the streaks are found. Stress for front of belt = 2500+.


See pictures below of belt after cleaning and test prints:



doc00001420210226214236.pdf



20210226_201650.jpg

[blackcat4866]

Did you notice that you have bad magenta developer spacers on your test machine?

I came to the came conclusion. the belt is too delicate to survive cleaning. =^..^=

[BillyCarpenter]

Did you notice that you have bad magenta developer spacers on your test machine?

I came to the came conclusion. the belt is too delicate to survive cleaning. =^..^=

Yeah, I swapped the magenta DV. I didn't realize it was the spacers. What clued you in that it's the spacers?

[blackcat4866]

On fill areas >65% you'll see bubbly voids, either to the front or to the back of the page. It's rare to have both developer spacers fail at the same time. Early on, Kyocera came out with a bulletin that future developing units would have the heavier duty developer spacers found on the KM-6551ci (though you could not purchase them separately).

This is one of my major complains with Kyocera's color sample page: only very small areas of the sample page have anything but 30% fill. I very nicely hides the developer spacer failure.

developer spacers.jpg

=^..^=