Ricoh 901; Here we go again!!!

[Happyprinter]

Well we purchased a Ricoh 901s to add to our offset operation about 5 months ago. Up till now it has operated fantastic. Before we made the purchase one of my biggest concerns was that we had competent, capable service techs for the machine. I was assured that we did. Our first service call was yesterday. After watching our techs scratch their heads and blame the paper, altitude, temperature, venus's alignment with saturn, they were unable to fix our problem. It seems that the standard answer for anything that they can not figure out is, "It's the Paper" even though it's on there approved list and we've been running it for 5 months without a problem. Excited to see what today brings for an excuse. Hope no one else is going thru this with Ikon.

 

[print123]

Is the machine good otherwise? How is the registration and print quality on c901?

 

[Corey]

What's going on with it? Is it a printing defect?

 

[Happyprinter]

As for the machine, It has been great. Solids are solid. Colors are spot on. This is the first service issue we have had since purchase. Not bad. The problem. The machine is so new, that the techs. are still learning it. They know the 900 inside and out but when it comes to the 901, not up to speed yet. We are having a problem with our solid's. Mainly when they are any color of blue. All other colors are still good, just the blues. We are printing on a 12 pt carolina c1s which up to this point have printed flawlessly. It is leaving streak on the image and white bloches in the solids. We have also been trying to get a list of papers that have been OK'd for the 901s but have had no luck so far. So we have been using a list that we have acquired for the 900 series, but with the fusers being different, Im sure the approved papers have changed also. Im sure we will get it straightened out eventually, we have forwarded the problem up the ladder but, I get tired of the same old excuse, when they dont know what the problem is, the fail safe excuse is ,"It's the Paper".

 

[neroas]

As for the machine, It has been great. Solids are solid. Colors are spot on. This is the first service issue we have had since purchase. Not bad. The problem. The machine is so new, that the techs. are still learning it. They know the 900 inside and out but when it comes to the 901, not up to speed yet. We are having a problem with our solid's. Mainly when they are any color of blue. All other colors are still good, just the blues. We are printing on a 12 pt carolina c1s which up to this point have printed flawlessly. It is leaving streak on the image and white bloches in the solids. We have also been trying to get a list of papers that have been OK'd for the 901s but have had no luck so far. So we have been using a list that we have acquired for the 900 series, but with the fusers being different, Im sure the approved papers have changed also. Im sure we will get it straightened out eventually, we have forwarded the problem up the ladder but, I get tired of the same old excuse, when they dont know what the problem is, the fail safe excuse is ,"It's the Paper".

Techs have to learn one way or another. I'm just an employee at the business I work for, we have a c720s. Our tech thankfully is pretty good, however the folks from vancouver really get on my nerves. They will say it's the stock, the humidity or whatever else is convenient for them. (the tech brought in a gauge for humidity and temp - which it turns out is not the problem.)

Unfortunately I can't add anything, but I feel your pain, it's frustrating.

 

[Craig]

You know your running bad paper you bought at a garage sale.... just fess up!

I'll never forget the time I kicked a Regional Service Manager from Canon out of my building. Poor guy just flew in from Chicago, hadn't been in my building for 15 minutes either. Bet he never started the conversation of with.... it's bad paper that causing you color problems!

 

[Happyprinter]

Just a follow up. After another visit from our tech we were told that there is a cyan problem with all the 901 series and Ricoh is trying to fix it. Also, when we purchased the machine I was told that we would have 2 fuser units so when we ran anything other than 12x18 we could change out the fuser unit to eliminate wear lines. Of course on delivery, when I asked were the second unit was I was informed that with the 901 that was not possible. In talking to several other reps. I was also informed that it was not a user changable item. Well as of Friday I was informed that I should of had another unit that I could change out when we switched paper sizes as we are now seeing some lines in our finished product. And yes, the unit is user changeable in the 901 series. Well, at least I haven't heard the "It's the paper excuse" in a few days now. Will keep you updated on the Cyan problem.

 

[dgraves]

User changeable fuser: I think they are now making this a customer purchaseable option. You can get one for a few thousand dollars.

 

[Craig]

User changeable fuser: I think they are now making this a customer purchaseable option. You can get one for a few thousand dollars.

Not aimed at the poster!. That is the dumbest thing I have heard, don't these manufactures and/or dealers realize how much money it will save them having user changeable parts? Why should I be down for a few hours to have a tech come in and swap out a fuser, when I can do it in less that 10 minutes? It blows my mind to think I would have to buy parts that are covered under my maintenance agreement??????

 

[ProC900Man]

In the EU the fuser has been a user replaceable item since launch and it's very common in the EU for commercial printers to have two units upon delivery... looks like the US / NA sales people have screwed up here big time!

As for media.. there is no relationship or correlation between the media performance results on a C900 to a C901. The C901 uses a totally different toner technology and the fusing units are also re desined. Anyone using the C900 list as a guide can expect different results... usually (in most cases) a better result.

As for the C901 media list I just quickly found the US/NA C901 media list on ricoh-usa.com
> At the main page go to support> then click on Knowledge Base > create an account (takes a minute) > Got to find an answer > click on the hyper link "list" next to the word Product > go all the way down the list to the category Production Printing Systems > click on the product C901 or C901s > Click on line 17 "New - Supported paper/media for AP and download the .pdf

I cannot believe your sevice personnel do not know about this, you should have been given this infomration at installation... I hope this helps..

BTW do you have any specific information about the cyan problem on the C901? we have heard nothing in the EU about it..

Good to hear your C901's are runing as well as our 3.. we are now heading towards the 800k PM and so far we only had a thermistor in one of the fusers go down.. but we had a spare so we were up and running within 10 mins ;-)

 

[imageworks]

I'm having similar problems with my 901. Ricoh Canada service is quite responsive - but I'm frustrated that the machine doesn't stay fixed for very long. I don't know if I got a lemon or what's going on. I call these guys every 2-3 days.

We got a 901 in March of 2011 - and have had several problems. It ran amazing for a month, then the problems started. They changed the entire developer unit twice, drum 4 or 5 times, drum cleaning unit 2 or 3 times. Our first concern was streaking in the cyan, running vertical, across sheet travel they called it "Shock Jitter." They changed some flywheels and that problem of vertical banding reduced significantly. This is an important thing to check, if you haven't done this already.

Now our problem is streaking running the direction of sheet travel. Ricoh Canada, overall, has been very responsive - we call, they come, they change parts, it works again. My frustration is the time between a good print and garbage is getting shorter. The machine runs good for 1-2 weeks, then problems again. Change parts, 1-2 weeks, problems again. The streaking is noticed most in the cyan. I'm not talking minor streaks - major streaks - totally unsellable. The ITB (Image Transfer Belt) is creased quite badly - it was changed at 400K and we're now at 480K. It has of life of 600K clicks, but it's destroyed at only 80K. The streaking seen on paper is the same pattern seen on the ITB. always running in the direction of sheet travel. The tech's can't isolate a "cause" of the creasing in the ITB... any ideas?

Is your ITB ok?

 

[Corey]

Have you ruled out static on the media as the cause of this problem? Static causes similar types of printing defects but its on the media in most cases, and not on the printer or in the print head.

 

[Nagramos]

I'm having similar problems with my 901. Ricoh Canada service is quite responsive - but I'm frustrated that the machine doesn't stay fixed for very long. I don't know if I got a lemon or what's going on. I call these guys every 2-3 days.

We got a 901 in March of 2011 - and have had several problems. It ran amazing for a month, then the problems started. They changed the entire developer unit twice, drum 4 or 5 times, drum cleaning unit 2 or 3 times. Our first concern was streaking in the cyan, running vertical, across sheet travel they called it "Shock Jitter." They changed some flywheels and that problem of vertical banding reduced significantly. This is an important thing to check, if you haven't done this already.

Now our problem is streaking running the direction of sheet travel. Ricoh Canada, overall, has been very responsive - we call, they come, they change parts, it works again. My frustration is the time between a good print and garbage is getting shorter. The machine runs good for 1-2 weeks, then problems again. Change parts, 1-2 weeks, problems again. The streaking is noticed most in the cyan. I'm not talking minor streaks - major streaks - totally unsellable. The ITB (Image Transfer Belt) is creased quite badly - it was changed at 400K and we're now at 480K. It has of life of 600K clicks, but it's destroyed at only 80K. The streaking seen on paper is the same pattern seen on the ITB. always running in the direction of sheet travel. The tech's can't isolate a "cause" of the creasing in the ITB... any ideas?

Is your ITB ok?

Our ITB has been replaced in every 8K prints cicle, since the 901 started here, about a month ago. That happened 3 times, but now things are, I think, ok.
The printer is really complicated. Guys from Roch are still learning. Remove paper jams is a problem if you don't have the skills or training from Ricoh. Even then, something can go wrong, as we saw here.
There's a problem everyone says with the blue fills. Somewhere here in this forum, even before we receive our printer, I was aware of that. But Ricoh replce some parts of the new printer from others they delivered here. That was necessary, according to them, as a engineering update.
We had a difficult first month with the new 901. On the other hand, it's the best printer I ever seen, the closest of traditional off-set print we ever had. It's worth the problems witch should be completelly solved this month.
I recomend the 901. But be patient with Ricoh, they are trying to achieve results.
Regards.