Screen PlateRite 8600S Autoloader slip sheet issue

Lab Man

Member
I am sure someone has already posted about this, but I have not found the thread if they have. We have an ongoing problem with our autoloader not removing slips sheets.

Autoloader model is MA-L8800II. Platesetter is Screen PlateRite 8600S. We use Fuji plates, LHPJ. We have 40", 28", and small plates for duplicator and Jet press.

The error is almost always E130F, during the removing a paper, PH90 does not switch to off.

This happens constantly with the large 40 inch plates, and the small Jet plates. Not nearly as much with the 28 inch plates. (???)

We have had this problem for years and years, worse in the winter when the humidity is lower. But it seems particularly bad now. We have contacted Fuji about this, and the technician was just here and did a PM. The problem continues.

Fuji says to fan the plates, which we do, all the time. It does no good.

Humidity is 25%. I know it's low. We have tried a humidifier (Hydrofogger) in the past with RO water and it put white powder in the optics of the platesetter. Maybe we need to buy 50 gallons of distilled water every week, but keeping that going is not much better than dealing with the slip sheet problem in the first place.

Here is what frustrates me the most about this. You get the error, go to the rear of the autoloader, remove the sheet, re-initialize. That's all well and good. The big problem is you have to stand and wait for the machine to go to ready, then clear the error from the DTC computer. I really wish there was a way for the DTC to just pick up and resume when the platesetter is ready, without having to clear out the error. Because what happens is (everyone knows, I'm sure) you can start doing something else before resuming from the tiff catcher computer, and the platesetter sits idle.

So there is a lot of time lost and wasted because of this problem. I'm sure everyone experiences this issue, not just us. It doesn't do much good to have the autoloader if you constantly have to clear out slip sheet errors.

I remember the plates used to come with brown slip sheets, instead of white ones. I think the problem was less common with the brown slip sheets.

If anyone has some insight on this issue please let me know. For now we will keep fanning plates. I may call Fuji back but it probably won't do any good. As I said, the technician just did a PM last week, and the problem continues. Maybe I'm missing something? The other guys in prepress are getting pretty angry about this, and rightly so. Thanks ahead for any input on this matter.
 
I feel your pain, bro. Not sure if the specific error code is related but we've run into dropped tissues as well on our PlateRite 4300, perhaps to a lesser extent because our humidity level is around the 50% range. Our "tissue issue", as we affectionately call it, randomly happens maybe 2-3 times a week. In the past, the worst time was winter and we've had a tech come out specifically to address it. He did PM stuff like cleaning the tips of the vacuum nozzles but also adjusted the bar to land evenly on the plate, which helped. We also have a something similar to a jogging tray (but much bigger) with a grounded metal plate at the base. We'll let some of the large plates sit openly in this jogger to discharge the static overnight.

Keep in mind of where you store the plates as well because you want to avoid extreme environmental changes right before your ready to start imaging. Just like paper, you want to minimize static by keeping it in a controlled environment for as long as possible. Hope this helps.
 
Just wanted to reply, We have the same exact setup MA-L8800II running fuji plates. We are using the LH-PJ Plates mostly 40" every once in a while we run a small 20" plate. We have 5 drawers but are only able to access three of them. We run around 100+ plates a day and we rarely have slip sheet errors. Our humidity usually runs between 13 & 17%. Our digital department is in adjoining room and would love hit 50% humidity. As far as the tiff catcher taking forever when you get an error we definitely have that issue. I guess the reason I am posting is to say that I don't believe its humidity unless you are too high. Hope it helps
 
Your problem may have many reasons - wrong vacuum sensor calibration, bad contact between nipples and paper, mechanical problems etc.
1. Try to clean vacuum nipples on the interleaf arm with alcohol - it will help to improve contact.
2. Fuji uses very hard interleaf paper, try to use plates from other vendor (only for diagnostic)
3. Check for parallelism between paper arm, cassette and nip roller.
4. Ask your service to check adjustment of vacuum pressure sensor.

Let me know result of your actions, hope I'will help
 
Lab Man, we have the same set up, use the same plates, and almost the same plate sizes. Two tricks we use, especially in the winter, and seems to help most with the 40" plates:
1. On the advise of a Fuji tech, we tape two fabric dryer sheets to the bottom of the cassette, one at each corner, so that plate overlaps 1/3 to 1/2 of the sheet. There is always a plate slip sheet in between the plate and dryer sheet.
2. We only load about 60% of the maximum cassette capacity in the winter (or roughly November-April in Ohio). Makes for more loading, but it beats going into the plateroom to fix errors all the time.

We still get occasional errors, but nothing like before.
 
can you post a photo of the inside of your autoloader? I need to see the air nozzle direction to tell you how to take care of this. look at the last page of the pdf i sent you.

Michael
 
We had this problem also and were also told it was a static issue, it ended up being the interleaf paper outlet gear was not in great shape.
 
We have an SA-L. We had a similar issue with the white interleave sheets. The service tech ordered and changed all the suckers which made it worse! Turns out the suckers are legacy matched to the particular autoloader. Thank goodness I saved the old ones. Another tech adjusted the position of the sucker bar with a pivot pin in the centre of the bar, also incorrect! Then a senior tech came in, put all those changes back to factory and saw that a little digital readout on the side opposite the drawers had reached a limit for the number of times the problem happened. He reset that readout to zero and the problem was fixed! We are past a year now without incident. RH varies between 24-75%, temperature is constant at 21C. Room is kept very clean by input filtration. We use an apartment sized Honeywell humidifier and tap water in the plate room. Requires filling once per shift and moves the RH to about 30% in dead of winter. When it rains outside Spring and Fall, we can hit 75%! PM's are done every quarter, optics keep pretty clean. Dirty feed rollers from SA-L to 8600Z is really our only PM issue.
 
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Thanks to everyone. Kind of busy today I will post pictures when time allows. Regarding the dryer sheets I have tried that today. Of course the humidity is higher today too.

I want to make sure I understand correctly. I taped the dryer sheets to the cassette in the corners at the outer edge of the drawer, corresponding to the punched edge of the plate. Then I put the stack of plates on top. The sheets stick out some past the corners of the plates.

I am not sure how that helps because the plate that is picked up is on top of the stack, not in contact with the dryer sheet. I hope I understood correctly. Thanks again.
 
Lab Man, the Fuji tech said the anti-static properties will transfer up the stack of plates. It sounded dubious to us, but it has helped in our building. We've had two consecutive brutal winters here in NW Ohio, and haven't had to deal with the slip sheet issue. Fortunately our parts must also be in relatively good health.

Our plates come on skids, but are individually packed. As I previously mentioned, we cannot load a full complement of 90 of the 40" plates, so we load only two packs of 30. And we have the same issue with our 13" plates, which come 50 to a pack. We load only one pack in the winter. Strangely, we can load 100 of the 28" plates without issue.

Hopefully this helps with your ongoing problem, and there is not something more involved with parts as others have mentioned. Good luck.
 
I staple a piece of masking tape to the dryer sheet and place at the back of the drawer with sheet on top of plates.

Dryer Sheet Placement.JPG
 
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We've recently had similar trouble with our largest sized plate (which caused the same error you mentioned). The static buildup was mainly due to the plate packaging although our humidity has been on a roller coaster as of late.

We have temporarily removed the cover that sits above the slip sheet exit door to help get more humidity into the machine. We've also tried saturating sponges with water (not to the point that the water runs) and putting them in the back corners of the plate cassette to try and dissipate some of the static. Service cleaned some rollers and the slip sheet suction cups. For now, things are working.

We thought about taking an anti-static brush around the sides of the plate stack in the plate cassette but haven't tried it yet.

Best regards,
pd
 
View attachment AutoLoadrer.pdf

We had dropped sheets all the time and the tech came in and made all the adjustments as well And it did not work. We tried this and no more dropped sheets. I am not saying that this will work for you but this has worked for us. make sure you talk with your tech. And go from there.

Hi can you post some photos and if you have something like this in your autoloader then

look over the pdf and let me know.

Auto-loader error 123.pdf I put this in an earlier post give this a look see if it will help.

Michael
 
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