SR790 Stapler Misaligned / Misses Paper

[Jason Engram]

I currently own a Savin 8035g / Ricoh 3035, with a SR790 finisher

Within the last week, it has suddenly decided to misalign the staples

A few times, the stapler barely catches the top edge of a letter size paper.

Most of the time it simply misses the paper completely.

It doesn’t matter how many sheets I try to staple.

It’s irrelevant whether it is landscape or portrait.

I have taken the covers off of the SR 790, cheated the door closed button and watched it operate.

The paper appears to be dropping into the right position, and the paper shifter (when I make multiple copies) seems to work just fine.

However, the stapler assembly seems to move too far to the left by about 1/2 to 3/4 inch (as you face the exit side of the SR 790 – i.e.: the spot furthest from the SR 790 door, as it is on your right).

If I physically push the stapler assembly back toward its “home” position on the door side of the SR 790, while it’s waiting for the last sheet to arrive, it will stay in that position, and hit the paper correctly. The paper ejects, the stapler comes over to the sensor on the left side, the blade enters the sensor unit, and the stapler assembly moves back to the right side of the unit near the door.

If I run another set through, the assembly is misaligned again.

If I pop the door open, and pull the stapler unit approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch toward the door, and then run the staple job, it will hit the paper correctly.

SP 6105 is set at 0mm, + / - and I haven’t played with that.

Because of the copier’s age, and because I own it none of the local copier companies will do much with it (I’ve asked), or they’ll charge an arm and leg to do so. I’ve kept it going with refurbished parts found from various places, and quite frankly, it runs rather well.

Any idea of how to repair this?

[davel]

Good luck, clean everything related to stapler movement, sensors, shafts, bushings, lube all moving parts, then try staple position adjustments.

[slimslob]

If it is consistently the same distance off, I would replace the home position sensor. Due to its age the sensor has built up a hysteresis delay when the staple head moves out. The control logic does not start counting the head position until after the signal from the sensor changes. This is to allow for take up of slack in the drive.

[Jason Engram]

The problem has been repaired. In case this ever happens to anyone else, Here’s what happened:

As I noted above, until the problem was repaired, when a new stapler cartridge was loaded, and the power was turned on, the stapler would cycle out and back, and then would fire off exactly 11 (no more, no less every time) perfectly crimped staples into absolutely nothing, and then the printer would tell me “SC724”. I.e., “Finisher stapler hammer motor”. I would have to open the door, flip the stapler out, and pull the new cartridge, and replace it with an empty one, and remove the 11 crimped staples.

As long as I had an empty stapler cartridge in place, I could at least make copies and send and sort print jobs.

Pursuant to some suggestions above, I took all the brackets and parts off the stapler portion of the SR-790 and wiped them down with WD-40. Everything was reinstalled and the connections checked. The plugs are pretty much idiot proof.

That didn’t work. I kept getting SC-724. So, after spending a whole lot of time online trying to find a new stapler, I finally found one in “new” condition overseas. I received it over the weekend. I completely unmounted the old unit, and installed the new one.

As I was doing so, I noted that the ground wire, as it enters the crimp, seemed just a little bit too flimsy for the type of wire. I checked the wire with an ohm meter, and it appeared fine. I didn’t trust the ohm meter. I grabbed a very large magnifying glass, and a 2^nd pair of glasses.

There was a small nick in the wire where it entered the crimp. Upon flexing the wire back, I was able to see the stinking thing was completely broken. How I missed this before, I've not a clue.

After splicing a new wire and new crimp in to the ground wire and screwing it into place, and reattaching the 2 other plugs, I closed the door and flipped the power switch.

The unit came on, and I could hear the stapler slide to the far side and back (the one benefit of the WD-40 was that it is now very quiet!)

This time it did not fire off any staples at all.

I ran a copy job, and specifically told it to staple. The staple hit the paper perfectly.

[Jason Engram]

After rereading the thread, I just realized I forgot to make an earlier post.

AFTER the misalignment problems started happening, I DID take out the bracket, and the stapler unit, and pulled everything apart, and cleaned all of it, as others suggested. I did not disassemble the stapler motor and hammer unit itself, though I did take it off the bracket that slides back and forth, that the motor is mounted to. I did mist a little bit of WD-40 onto the stapler hammer gears, and hammer itself.

I did not take the cables off of the logic board, but simply unplugged the plugs going into the stapler motor, and unscrewed the grounding wire. Everything was actually pretty simple to disassemble.

It was after reassembly that things actually got worse. At that point, it now completely failed to operate at all, firing off the aforementioned 11 perfectly crimped staples at the "home" position, and throwing the error.

Thereafter, the copier/printer would only work if I had an empty staple cartridge in the stapler.

Apparently, the grounding wire was just about to break prior to my removing the unit and cleaning everything. I'm not an electrician or programmer, so I can only presume that the wire must have initially been producing enough resistance to confuse the stapler about its location, thus causing the staples to be misaligned.

Cleaning the unit probably then completely broke the ground wire inside the insulation, and ultimately caused the unit to go completely nutty.