Would you replace drum chips or replace the drums?

[gazfocus]

I've just ordered a Xerox J75 to replace our C560 but the dealer has said the drums are at 25-50%. I've used replacement chips on office machines in the past to extend the life of the drums but obviously with a prodcution machine, quality has to be the number one. So, I am just curious about who out there would replace the drums vs who would buy replacement chips. Looking online, a full set of replacement drums can cost anything up to £1,000 whereas a set of replacement chips are £30 so could be a huge cost saving.

Interested to hear opinions

 

[kslight]

If quality is really number one, which for me it always is...I change the drums when I see a problem. I will swap Cyan or Magenta with the Yellow drum to make sure the problem is the drum...if I can't see the problem in yellow then I'll leave it there, but if I can, I'm replacing it. It doesn't matter if its at 70% life remaining or 10% life remaining. I can tell you very rarely will the drums still be worth using past 10% life remaining. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times that I have been able to take a drum all the way to the point that the machine demands it...and we've had a couple J75s for as many years. The amount of times I have replaced drums that according to the machine had more than 50% life remaining is certainly more frequent.

Our machines do not seem to request drums before they are spent...assuming your machine is the same I would not trouble with buying new chips.

But we do not buy parts a la carte...we have supplies in our contract, so there is literally no reason for us to try to squeeze extra life out of a consumable because we pay the same no matter what.

 

[arossetti]

I echo what was said above. It is very rare that a drum would still be good for production by the time that the machine asked for it to be replaced. Anywhere after 60% of use could I expect to replace it based on output.

 

[mohamed.aitslimane]

You could change chips and keep the drums for jibs nit requiring quality, like text, text with images and those kind of jobs. Since these are parts that are easy to change. I have a black drum with a chip that i use for monochrome text jobs to avoid degrading the new one tjat i install for quality prints