Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

alf

Member
I run a copy shop, and we have a xerox 1250 and a xerox 1256ga. We recently expanded with a xerox 5000 with a creo rip (lovely printer, and a huge upgrade from our 125x)

One thing i notice though, is that all our print outs have a greenish-grey background now on the whole sheet, its like a super fine layer of waste toner fused in. Its on the whole surface of the paper, even the unprintable area. The xerox technician claims that this 'background' is normal for all printers. (You can see it by printing single sided and comparing the unprinted areas of the printed side and the unprinted side)

We did some test and realise that the 125x had a background value equivalent to around 1% grey, very very faint. The 5000 has a background that varies from 3-4% grey. What this means is that a super white uncoated paper, comes out a dull white paper now. (We do a lot of namecard stock paper)

Its more obvious on thick stock paper and has come to a point where some customers complain about it. Xerox claims its 'within specs', specs which they couldnt officially come up with because they had no way of testing at all.

I wonder if anyone else has this issue, and know of ways to reduce the 'background'

Any help is much appreciated.
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

I have that issue, and I don't know a way around it. Calibrating
seems to help, but our tech said about what you already know.
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

We have a 5000 with a fiery rip, and I don't think that it has anything in the background. I will double check tommorow.

Robert
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

its very faint, only will realise it if you compare it with the unprinted back side (i.e. single sided print). or you could grab a 15x loop and you can see the particles on the white areas of the printed side.

apparently the reason given, is tat each drum will always give a random % of small toner particles, and coz the 5000 has 4 drums vs the 1256's 1 drum, it will have approx 4 time more background dust.

i've tried cleaning up the whole machine, didnt make much difference. the % background varies after every servicing, which gets infuritating. (Our super white paper currently comes out with a greenish white tone.. lol)

99% of the customers will not realise the diff, but we've got some customers who take the printout outdoor to look !

oh, its not rip dependent. do a single sided alignment test on the 5000's PC-UI (so it prints those alignment rectangle on one side of the paper instead of double sided), and you can see it. (yar, this took me 2 rounds of technician, 1 service manager, before they were convinced it was not my rip's profile, i almost had to disconnect the whole RIP off to show him it happens w/o a RIP)
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

When I first read this post I said to myself, "no way!" We have had a 5000 for several months and have run several hundred thousand copies on it and never noticed a problem. So, I grabbed a sheet and took a look, no background. Then I grabbed a Loup and put it into better lighting, and Low and behold, gray background. I then put a blank sheet of paper next to it, and in good light, you can see the difference with the naked eye. I doubt my clients will ever notice, but it is there! So the next thing I did was print the same image on the same stock on our Doc 12. When you lay the 2 copies next to each other, in good light, you can see the background difference between the 2 copies. Very Very slight, but it is there. You can also see where there is no background at the top of the sheet where there is no image in the "gripper" area. Very interesting. This is the first chink on the armour on our 5000. So far, it has been the best machine I have ever had in over 25 years in the business. I can't wait for our next service call.
Bert
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

Join the club. i loved my 125x machines to death, and when we upgraded to the 5000, it was a dream come true. (Accurate duplexing, and auto duplexing on thicker stock)

When we reported this issue (I'm based in Singapore btw), the technician(s) was in heavy denial, and we had to get the issue escalated all the way to the service manager who was also trying to deny it as much as he can.

They insisted it wasnt a problem coz

1. No one else has ever reported this issue and
2. They later did a check on all their 'production class' machines (8000, etc) and realised it was the same (3-4% grey tint as compared to a totally unprinted side), and thus it was acceptable.

I had asked what if the problem got worst (my machine is only 6 months old), coz on the first month, print outs was fine at 1% odd, the dc1256 level (i keep copies of all the calibration sheets away from the sun on a standard stable paper stock), then we went through this whole discussion with their head office (All this has been with xerox direct), they were fedexed a sample sheet of paper with 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% tints to see what was acceptable. The silly thing was, it was totally useless, as head office didnt provide the same paper for testing, and didnt even provide the test file/printer to print the tints out on our paper. So there was no control item to compare with. (By the way, the sample sheet they use was at least a few years old, and looked like a WW2 treaty parchment)

The case is currently left as 'to be monitored', and I pray the background issue doesnt get darker. You cant imagine how much screaming my (very patient) sales girl took in the past few months. I try to be reasonable, and understand printers are not perfect, but it crosses the line when a customer can see the problems - and customers are blind.

Now all we need is all 5000 owners to make enough noise to xerox and we might actually get a copy charge reduction or something *grin*

P.S. BertThePrinter: Do tell us what your service technician says =)
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

I would think that if it is the RIP, then it would be from how you have your Rendering Intent set. If you have it set to Absolute colormetric then it will simulate the paper white of the stock used to create your .icc or .icm profile. You might try setting it to Relative colormetric.

Just a thought.
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

We found this when we decided to switch paper and thought that the paper was causing it. Then we looked into it using a Lube and found the background to be dirty. Printed the same image on 240 and it was dirty also. Did not do any more testing. But was thinking of placing a service call. The 5000 is like only 3 months old. It prints great and we love it compared to 2045.

Thanks to this forum for removing the doubt that the paper was causing it - I can safety use the cheaper digital paper instead of futura.


The same sheet when printed on our DI press there are no background and paper is white. I love the DI.

Thanks
DiPressForums.com
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

We eliminated the RIP out of the equation by just using the PCUI console to get the background issue. (Just print a alignment sheet on one side)

Paper matters slightly. We notice that the less-white the paper (i.e. artcards, off-white vanilla papers) and thicker paper have more obvious results. The least obvious (Obviousness measured by measuring the tint different from the printed side and the unprinted side) was the 100GSM Xerox Colotech Uncoated Paper, the most obvious was our Naturalis Vanilla 250GSM paper. Your mileage will vary.

The more laser drums you have (The Xerox 125x has only one vs the Xerox 5000's 4) the more background issues you have. This is from current experimentations and unofficial feedback from the serivce engineer who was explaining the reason for background issues, still trying to get my hands on other printers =P
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

Interesting! This sounds like the same issue that we used to get with a Docutech and could never get rid of. Do you find that it is very slight when the drum is new and increases with clicks? I remember that we had to change drums far more regularly than Xerox expected, just to keep the quality acceptable.

I just grabbed a sheet off of a 250 (same print engine as the 5000) and looked at it under a light table with a powerful loupe. Zip, nada, rien - all I could see was the yellow "fingerprint" dots. That machine's been printing solid 12 hrs/day all week and hasn't seen a Xerox engineer for a month or so, so I would expect the problem to be there if it's present.

I guess that not all machines exhibit this problem??
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

I've ran the DC5000 in the past and have never had background isues.If you can notice it with the naked eye and customers are complaining ,I'd continue placing service calls untill you're happy.Have they sent you in a specialist yet?.I've had problems in the past with xerox equipment where several tech's have tried to resolve the issue for weeks if not months untill one day a different tech shows up and fixes it in no time.I know with iGen3 you can get background problems if the tc sensor isn't set up properly.

If you'd like it resolved really fast phone your sales rep and tell him to send the truck for it.Tell him you're going to get an hp.lol.
 
Re: Background Issues on the Xerox 5000

The background issue i have on our Xerox machines is the registration-code of the machine which is on every printout on every xerox machine, when you put a loop on it: Can you see any pattern in it, a repeating image?
 
Yes, the yellow dot patterns that each color laser points on your documents without your permission or you even knowing about it so that it can be traced back to your machine by government officials...
 

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