Plockmatic PBM5035 RCT Skewing while Cutting

[jlassiter76]

Hi all,
We have a Ricoh C9210 with a Plock and RCT unit. I'm printing a ton of full bleed magazines on mostly gloss 80# or 100# sheets. We got the new Plock last September and all was running fine until recently. Now everything I run through the RCT is skewing when it's cutting and my magazines are off when it finishes them. You can see at the bottom how it's not folding properly (I'm guessing due to the poor cut).

It's almost like the paper gets to the RCT and then it doesn't roll through correctly causing the bad trim on the top and bottom. This is the 2nd plock we've had and I remember having this issue before and the tech put an anti-static kit on it and that seemed to fix it except for digest size booklets, which I still had to hand feed.

Now we bought a anti-static kit for the new one and we're still having the skewing/cutting issue.

My Ricoh tech can't seem to figure out the issue because we're the only one in town that he services that has an RCT unit. I guess I'm looking to see if anyone has experienced this issue and what they've done to remedy it. I'm not 100% certain it's a static issue. It did start happening in the colder months, but now it's humid and warm again (Alabama) and I'm still having the same problem.

If I print sheets that do not need trimming in the RCT, I have no issues. We bought the RCT to do the trimming so I didn't have to, but now I'm back to trimming huge stacks of paper again and using the convenience feed tray (which is hit or miss) or hand feeding them, which is not productive at all.

Thanks for listening. Images attached.

 

[kslight]

I don’t have a Plockmatic but are you using the creaser when making books? And if so, is it still skewed when you disable the creaser? I used to have a km machine with an (not Plockmatic) inline slitter cutter creaser booklet maker and enabling the creaser causes books to fold skewed.

 

[jlassiter76]

I don’t have a Plockmatic but are you using the creaser when making books? And if so, is it still skewed when you disable the creaser? I used to have a km machine with an (not Plockmatic) inline slitter cutter creaser booklet maker and enabling the creaser causes books to fold skewed.

Thank you for your reply. I normally disable the creaser but sometimes it comes on by default. I'll be sure and check that next time, but I do believe the last magazine I ran, the creaser was off.

 

[DBaker]

I used to work with a similar setup with the inline plock on a ricoh 9200 and ran into a similar issue. Below I am linking to an older post that I found helpful for what seems to be a similar issue to what I was experiencing.

https://printplanet.com/threads/plockmatic-350m-skew.292132/

 

[jlassiter76]

I used to work with a similar setup with the inline plock on a ricoh 9200 and ran into a similar issue. Below I am linking to an older post that I found helpful for what seems to be a similar issue to what I was experiencing.

https://printplanet.com/threads/plockmatic-350m-skew.292132/

Thanks, I will give this a try!

 

[PrintJockey81]

I used to work with a similar setup with the inline plock on a ricoh 9200 and ran into a similar issue. Below I am linking to an older post that I found helpful for what seems to be a similar issue to what I was experiencing.

https://printplanet.com/threads/plockmatic-350m-skew.292132/

We have the same set up and issues at my shop. Thank you for the link.

 

[jlassiter76]

My tech has been out and we think the plock was pushed too far back somehow and this was causing the sheets from the press to enter the RCT unit at the wrong position. There is a sticker inside that marks where paper should enter and it was off by about a quarter of an inch. He pushed it back and so far I haven't seen then cutting/skewing issue.

 

[jlassiter76]

We're still experiencing this skewing issue. My tech and myself have tried almost everything we can think of and he said in his experience the problem should either always happen or never happen. It shouldn't just happen sporadically like it's been doing. I can print 5 booklets and they're perfect and then maybe the next 10 are skewed. I have noticed pieces of the trim getting caught around the knives, but I don't think that's the entire issue.

The closest we came to getting it to work was to adjust the screw in the RCT that they call "The Bleed/Side Trimmer Registration Angle" adjustment. If I turn it clockwise, the skewing stops BUT there are now wrinkles in the paper and the bottom cut is way off as compared to the top. So that usually means it's too tight, but going back counter clockwise results in the trimming skew again

My Ricoh tech did find a recent recall (see attached) on some solenoid gaskets but it's not the same model as my Plock, but he ordered the part anyway. It's backordered so we're still waiting.

 

[jlassiter76]

FIXED!

We finally got the backordered part for this from the Ricoh bulletin and that seems to have fixed this issue.
It was literally replacing some gaskets that were 5mm thicker than the OEM gaskets on the solenoid.

If you run into this issue, have your tech look for this bulletin and get those new gaskets.