laser-lovers@uw-beaver (05/24/85)
From: Marshall Rose <mrose%NRTC@USC-ECL.ARPA>
We have an Imagen 12/300 printer, which uses a Ricoh LP4120 engine.
We've had the printer for about 6 weeks. The problem we have is
that the engine seems to get a lot of "synchronization errors" when
it misses the "timing mark". The way the engine works is that
there's this "OPC" belt which goes around on a roller and has a
timing mark that lets the printer know where the page starts.
Apparenly either the belt slips on the roller (a friction problem)
or little bits of toner drop down on the mark and fuse there (with
the exception of the mark, the track the mark is on is entirely
black, the mark itself is reflective purple). I have tried cleaning
the rollers, and (at Imagen's instructions) using an X-acto knife to
scrape the fused toner away. Sometimes this works, sometimes it
doesn't. Right now, the printer's down due to this problem, and
I'm waiting to hear back from Imagen on a service call.
My gut feeling is that this is a design problem for Ricoh, and can't
be fixed. I could be wrong. Anyway, my questions are: 1) how many
people out there are using 12/300's, 2) are you having this
problem, 3) if so, how do you cope with it?
Thanks in advance,
/mtr
ps: With the exception of the problem above, the 12/300 is (in my
opinion) a nice system. However, a nice system which is frequently
down isn't very useful...