Ricoh C900 Major Issues

[steven574]

We acquired a Ricoh C900 approximately 5 months ago. It was a showroom machine with about 42,000 clicks on it. We have had problems on and off throughout the first 4.5 months. As of the last 2 weeks, however, we have been down pretty much all the time. I have had to place numerous service calls, but unfortunately have had little results from my technicians. We had 2 techs at the shop yesterday. One of them was here all day. The machine was working better, but as of right now is I am getting streaks through half of the piece I am running.

The problems include, but are not limited to service codes 399-01, 992 and 524. SC 399-01 and 992 have been resolved for the most part. SC 524 is the most recent error code and has now limited me to running 25 sheets maximum of 13x19.2 Kromekote C1S. I believe it is related to the streaks I am getting. We have a band going down the non-operator side of the sheet that has something to do with the yellow drum assembly. We are waiting for parts on that. The color is uneven across (operator to non-operator) the sheet. I think that has something to do with the yellow drum assembly also. We are getting small white voids in the solids. We were told that had something to do with the toner bottles nearing empty, but does not go away when the bottle is replaced. I , myself, think that is bs. I saw that kind of stuff happen on our old machine, the CPP500, and it was the developer or the developer units. We have already replaced the developer once last week, but the dev units have yet to be replaced.

I understand that the machine is still in its infancy and I can appreciate that the techs still are learning about the machine, but I can't keep going like this. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas or has had any of the problems that I have described above, and what was done about it.

Please email me direct at [email protected]

Thank you for your responses.

Steve
Southbury Printing Centre

 

[msaeger]

Who is servicing it ? What are the current copy counts ? Do you have the TCRU kit ?

 

[steven574]

Who is servicing it ? What are the current copy counts ? Do you have the TCRU kit ?

IKON is servicing it. We are at 350,000 clicks. I had a TCRU kit. It has yet to be replenished.

 

[msaeger]

So are you saying units from the TCRU kit have been installed but not rebuilt yet ?

524 is paper exit motor lock I haven't seen that one yet. The manual lists for possible causes a couple SP's that could be set wrong, something stopping the motor from turning, bad motor, bad board that drives the motor. There is also a bulletin that suggests a firmware upgrade may help but if you were not having this the whole time I wouldn't guess firmware. It never hurts to update that though.

Do you know what they have tried to replace ?

 

[steven574]

So are you saying units from the TCRU kit have been installed but not rebuilt yet ?

524 is paper exit motor lock I haven't seen that one yet. The manual lists for possible causes a couple SP's that could be set wrong, something stopping the motor from turning, bad motor, bad board that drives the motor. There is also a bulletin that suggests a firmware upgrade may help but if you were not having this the whole time I wouldn't guess firmware. It never hurts to update that though.

Do you know what they have tried to replace ?

As far as the SC 524, nothing. The streak on the non-operator side of a 13" wide sheet, they are currently going to try to replace the cleaning unit, the drum, and the coronoa assembly on the yellow. Both came from our TCRU originally, however, we have had nothing but problems with most of the parts that came out of that kit.

I will talk to our tech about updating the firmware. The tech is suppose to be here today, but with the lack of techs in our area, I don't expect to see them until mid to late afternoon. 4 hour service seems to be a big joke now with Ikon.

Thank you for your response.

 

[msaeger]

Yeah if you are getting a yellow streak it would have to be the yellow drum, cleaning unit, or corona. SC399 is a drum motor not turning so that could be caused by a flipped drum cleaning blade. If that happened you would probably get a CQ problem too. I would guess the yellow cleaning unit got messed up. Not enough lube on the drum when installing it maybe and the blade flipped ?

 

[Mark H]

Steve,

Alarm bells go off in my head (right next to the voices I hear) whenever I see diagnostic information that points to problems in several widely disparate sub-assemblies. The odds of multiple failure points occurring simultaneously is very limited; with the exception of an upstream problem damaging substrate, which then breaks other things as it passes through.

Did the unit ever work right? After it was delivered and setup, how long before it went kaflooey? (Sorry, Navy technical term there) Did you ever see it run correctly at the IKON showroom? Was it always a showroom model, or was it pulled from another client site?

If all else fails (and it sound like it has) IKON has a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Use it.

Mark H

 

[steven574]

Yeah if you are getting a yellow streak it would have to be the yellow drum, cleaning unit, or corona. SC399 is a drum motor not turning so that could be caused by a flipped drum cleaning blade. If that happened you would probably get a CQ problem too. I would guess the yellow cleaning unit got messed up. Not enough lube on the drum when installing it maybe and the blade flipped ?

Once I figured out what that error was, I opened the yellow unit up, but everything looked ok. So I reset everything, and the error went away. Unfortunately, it comes back every once in a while, and all the tech does it is look at the unit then turn the machine off then on.

When I was watching the techs, the weren't sure where to actually powder the drum. They were thinking that the dev unit was pulling off the powder before getting to the cleaning unit. I'm not exactly sure how the drums are suppose to be installed due to the fact that I haven't been "officially" trained on the TCRU.

 

[steven574]

Steve,

Alarm bells go off in my head (right next to the voices I hear) whenever I see diagnostic information that points to problems in several widely disparate sub-assemblies. The odds of multiple failure points occurring simultaneously is very limited; with the exception of an upstream problem damaging substrate, which then breaks other things as it passes through.

Did the unit ever work right? After it was delivered and setup, how long before it went kaflooey? (Sorry, Navy technical term there) Did you ever see it run correctly at the IKON showroom? Was it always a showroom model, or was it pulled from another client site?

If all else fails (and it sound like it has) IKON has a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Use it.

Mark H

The maximum weight substrate we use is #100 cover, coated and uncoated. The size that we mostly run is 12x18. We have tried different brands: Finch, Cougar, Sterling, Futura and XPRI. We have gotten good results from the Finch and XPRI.

Yes, the unit did work right. Not perfect, but it ran a heck of a lot better then it does now. The machine has been down multiple times since we got it. It went down less then a month after it was installed with smaller problems. I never actually demoed the unit myself, but the owner and one other person both saw it run at the showroom. It was always a showroom machine.

It seems to me that the problems are escalating, and Ikon isn't doing enough to solve the problems aside from just replacing the machine. I will discuss Ikon's 100% guarantee with the owner.

Thank you.

 

[steven574]

Update. We have a different problem now. Something is putting a slight score line in our yellow and magenta drums. We replaced the drums thinking it was just bad drums and we have replaced the cleaning units, but that did not work. I have not talked to the tech yet. They will be in tomorrow to replace some boards to try to fix our other problems. Just wondering if anyone else has seen that.

 

[steven574]

Ok. Now we are having jamming issues through trays 3 and 4. The feed tires have been replaced on both units. We have not had this problem before and we have been running the same stock for a couple a months or so before they replaced the tires. The stock we are using is 12x18 #100 XPRI Coated Cover. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas as to why this is happening? We have a tech coming in hopefully soon to adjust the yellow laser, and maybe he will be able to fix it.

As far as the earlier problems, most have been resolved now. 2 techs came in yesterday and basically replaced all of the parts inside the machine. Unfortunately, it's not running perfectly. The quality has gone down slightly and we are not happy about it. We are able to get ours jobs done, but are once again becoming very frustrated.

 

[Mark H]

Is it a jamming issue, or multifeed problem? We usually have issues with static during the winter months up here in Maine (very dry winters) and have similar problems if we don't fan the paper properly when loading.

Mark H

 

[steven574]

Is it a jamming issue, or multifeed problem? We usually have issues with static during the winter months up here in Maine (very dry winters) and have similar problems if we don't fan the paper properly when loading.

Mark H

It is multifeed issues. We will try to fan it out better.

 

[msaeger]

Ok. Now we are having jamming issues through trays 3 and 4. The feed tires have been replaced on both units. We have not had this problem before and we have been running the same stock for a couple a months or so before they replaced the tires. The stock we are using is 12x18 #100 XPRI Coated Cover. Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas as to why this is happening? We have a tech coming in hopefully soon to adjust the yellow laser, and maybe he will be able to fix it.

As far as the earlier problems, most have been resolved now. 2 techs came in yesterday and basically replaced all of the parts inside the machine. Unfortunately, it's not running perfectly. The quality has gone down slightly and we are not happy about it. We are able to get ours jobs done, but are once again becoming very frustrated.

What quality issues are you having now ?

So you didn't get the multifeeding until the rollers were replaced ? If that's the case I would guess wrong or improperly installed rollers. Otherwise could be a torque limiter. If it's not that the settings for the air separation assist can be changed so the fans blow harder or they may not be set to run for the paper type selected.

 

[steven574]

What quality issues are you having now ?

So you didn't get the multifeeding until the rollers were replaced ? If that's the case I would guess wrong or improperly installed rollers. Otherwise could be a torque limiter. If it's not that the settings for the air separation assist can be changed so the fans blow harder or they may not be set to run for the paper type selected.

We once again had 2 techs working on the machine all day on Friday. Even our salesman was there. They ordered more parts to fix the trays.

It just so happens that one problem we were having was actually caused by a setting one of the techs had changed. Thankfully, he was able to track it down and fix it. I'm not exactly sure how to describe that particular issue. What we were getting was scratches a few inches up from the tail of the sheet. It took several hundred sheets for the problem to even begin occurring. We were running #100 12x18 coated cover. After the problem started, the machine would print 25 or so more sheets then jam. When we looked at the tail of the sheet, you could see that there were color bars not on the sheet, but on the edge of the sheet. It was definately not in our file.

As far as quality, we had printed some postcards a month or so ago that had a bunch of photos. They looked great the first time around. The client ordered more, but with a couple of different photos on the piece. When we compared the new postcard to the old, it didn't look as good. The photos weren't smooth this time. It really wasn't good. The techs were able to fix that also.

On Monday, the service manager is coming top our shop to determine if the machine needs to get replaced. I'm actually confident that our machine my actually be almost running as it did when we first received it. We are going to have a long conversation with him. It should be interesting.

Just as a side note, we took a look at our service call history for this machine. From almost day one until now, there have been approximately 120 business days (No Sa****ays). Of those 120 days, we have placed 52 service calls.

 

[msaeger]

52 calls yikes ! what are the counts on this thing ? I would guess they won't swap it now that it is running good though.

 

[steven574]

52 calls yikes ! what are the counts on this thing ? I would guess they won't swap it now that it is running good though.

Yeah. I think we are just about to hit 300000 color clicks.

As far as replacing it, I think they're about ready to do what we want. It's the least they can do.

 

[steven574]

Ikon has finally caved. We will be getting a replacement for our C900. We don't know when we will be receiving it. Our tech is waiting for word from the movers.

Other then that, they finally got the machine to stop jamming. We can use it now.

 

[msaeger]

Sounds good you will have to update the thread with how the new one works out.

 

[steven574]

I certainly will. I can only hope that this works. We really like this machine. It has doubled our color output. Thanks to everyone for the support.