The secret life of machines, copier

[Rusty.Harris]

I ran across this one, I remembed it from the 90's on TV. The secret life of machines, photocopiers.

[JR Skewing]

Thanx! The vid was informative, with a nice dose of humor.
I appreciate that the regional office was outdoors!
...Lorenzo

[Hansoon]

I forgot completely about the once existence of machines with moving tables! Thanks for reminding.

Hans

[Samanator]

When I started doing copier repair, many of the machines in this video were still out in the field. The moving top machines and clam shell design were commonplace in the late seventies and eighties.

I remember carrying a phillips-head screwdriver with a 12" (or maybe 14") shank just for propping open many clam shell machines because the little shocks that were supposed to keep them open were shot and the machine would close on you while working on it. Similar to an office chair that you put to the highest level, then it goes down when you sit in it. Only many times the clam shell would shut as soon as you took you hand away when you opened it.

These machines were often chain or cog belt driven by one motor. Magnetic clutches and especially mechanical clutches always needed attention.

One way to keep up the copy quality (for me anyway) was to clean and restring the corona assembly. And one would never leave a machine with puling the top glass and giving the lens, mirrors, and the underside of the glass a good cleaning.

These were also the days that you carried a meter, solder iron, and some electrical components to do some board repair. Black electrical tape was also a staple in my kit.

Different days, different problems but customers haven't changed.

[JR Skewing]

The 3M VQC III (aka Model 215), was a moving table unit using a roll of zinc oxide coated paper. The paper was so insensitive that this 5 CPM machine had a corona box running at 17kV! The exposure lamp was ≈ 1,200 watts. I haven't restrung a corona in over ten years.
...Lorenzo