Old Man Winter Is Almost Here

By Raymond Cote

With Indian summer over, the temperature starts to drop ever so slowly and we start to feel the difference. The changes can be quietly affecting us when we get up in the morning, with minor aches and pains that we sort of never had before. Maybe we had them and they were ignored for one reason or another—but now we are aware of them, big time! With the first frost, most annuals start to die and we start to feel the temperature in our bones. Maybe that small pond behind the barn is starting to show signs of some fog in the mornings; soon the fish in the pond will start to hibernate at the bottom and just hover there till spring. It all lets us know that Old Man Winter is on the way.

What always seems to truly amaze me is the beauty of the fall. It’s hard to ignore the trees turning brilliant colors of yellow and shades of red, as if nature is trying to remind us winter is on the way. Personally, I truly think it’s nature’s way of trying to get our attention: “Hey, wake up and smell the coffee!”

It’s also interesting to note that while things are starting to cool down in the northern hemisphere, other things are happening as well. Most notably, we will start to see the copiers act up and do some weird things that we may not have noticed before. And, in my opinion, I truly believe that as complex as a copier is, they have their reactions to the changing climate as well.

I think it’s important that on the next service call we should look over the copier and do some preventative maintenance. If, for example, a heat roller is badly worn, maybe we should replace it before it fails. Or maybe the feeders or feed belts are showing signs of wear; we should address that issue before it becomes an issue with the customer. Talk to the key operator and advise them that paper will absorb humidity and moisture, and may cause paper handling problems. 

Have you noticed that call activity has gone up considerably from the summer? Most of you would think that it was due to the business world getting back on track after Labor Day. Maybe that’s the case, but I’m convinced the weather has something to do with it as well.

Last month a technician contacted my office about a registration problem he was having on his Xerox 5390 copier—varying registration from the Remote Document Handler. When a document was hand-placed on the platen glass there was never a registration problem, but when they used the RDH, the registration was all over the place. What was interesting about this situation was that there were no system fault error codes. It was also brought to my attention that during the adjustment procedure in Dc-604 it was a hit-and-miss operation—meaning that sometimes no matter which way you went with the adjustment (up or down), the copier did not respond and the adjustment stayed erratic; at other times, the adjustment was dead on. When you returned to the operator screen to produce copies, the problem returned—big time 

On close examination it was noted that all DC stepper motors were operating correctly, and all electrical PWBs were doing their job as well. All internal belts were adjusted, Blower ‘O’ rings were replaced and the blowers were blowing up a storm. New document belts were installed, the platen glass was cleaned. And lastly, the Mylar strip was scotch-taped to the glass so that it would not intervene with the paper path. After all that was done, the problem still persisted in the RDH and the tech was starting to pull his hair out. It was brought to my attention that the “baseline adjustment” should be performed on this 5390 copier’s RDH to resolve this issue. Hey, that’s a great idea under the circumstances, but it would not solve this particular problem.

In troubleshooting this phenomenon, I asked the tech to do the following:

-- Load several originals in the RDH (3 or 4)

-- Remove the platen glass

-- Make two sets of copies (yes, with the platen glass removed).

Is the copy quality defect still evident in the copies? In this case, the copies still displayed a registration that was walking all over the place. Okay, then it’s not a clearance problem in the RDH. There is plenty of clearance for the originals to freely pass through the system. What was left were three parts that might be the culprit in this situation—or maybe all three are causing it. The parts that should be replaced are as follows:

            1) Document Transport Belt Kit 600K15180 can cause the wandering registration problem. When replacing these (11) belts, ensure they are installed correctly—meaning there is a wrong way to install them! This may sound odd, but there is a seam on the belts that, when installed incorrectly, can actually catch the paper and cause it to miss register or slow down. Use your thumbnail to determine which direction will cause the least resistance to paper flow.

            2) Document transport drive belt 423W58050 can actually start to loose some of its teeth and cause some serious headaches. Because of the belt’s location in the RDH, it is difficult to see unless you remove the document transport and remove the small Gilmer belt to inspect it close up. In the field it is not uncommon to find teeth on the belt that are badly worn or, in some cases, almost smooth. This will definitely cause wandering registration.

            3) Document Transport Drive roller 6K7981 can cause and is usually the culprit in wandering registration problems in the RDH. What usually happens is dirt will contaminate the Document Transport Drive roller and the RDH Document belts will actually slip and not drive in a uniform manner. One good test is to line up all the seams on the Document Handler belts and then run about ten originals through the RDH. When the run is completed open the RDH and inspect the seams on the RDH Document belts. Are they still all lined up? I bet they are not. My suggestion is wash the drive roller with some film remover as a temporary measure so the 5390 can be used. I would strongly urge you to replace that drive roller as soon as possible. Order kit number 600K20091: this roller has a coated (rubber) surface on the drive roller that has a positive drive effect on the belts.

“Midwest Danny” wrote to say: “Before you run DC-951 Xerographic you should vacuum the ESV. This was not a practice I tried until this Midwest technician suggested it to me. Up until this point I used a soft dry cloth to clean the ESV and a slightly moist cloth to clean the DSS before running any type of Xerographic program. Actually it’s important to have a clean ESV and the best way is to use the super sucker with the crevice tool. First and foremost: Turn off the power and make sure the machine is completely off. This is the most critical step because if you don’t power down completely, you will blow the ESV. If you remove the toner bottle, you should have enough clearance to access the ESV. Open the belt module assembly and use the crevice tool on the underside of the ESV. Vacuum it for about 30 seconds or so. Return the belt module to the home position, replace the toner bottle and continue with the DC-951 Xerographic set up procedure.”

Dave, a technician from Boston sent in a tip on resolving 06-236 optics faults.

“Customer has a Xerox 5690 copier that has an intermittent “06-236” optics system fault. It seems every time I go there I always do something that seems to repair the problem, but it always seems to come back again, and again, and again. I think I have the Repair Analysis Procedure memorized for that problem. Sometimes the fault goes away for a day, sometimes a week, and the longest was a month. Everything in the circuit was replaced at least twice. The first item was the cavity sensor assembly, part number 2E4814. After it was replaced I performed ADJ 6.1 by entering DC-904 to calibrate the cavity sensor. On the next call I swapped out the MIN ADA PWB #2 with MIN ADA PWB #1. Third call, I swapped the Preflash PWB part number 140K42310 with the other 5090. And on the fourth service call I swapped the Illumination Power Supply with the 5090. Every time I swapped a component I looked for the problem to jump to the other machine, it never happened. The other 5090 was running like a powerhouse all the time.

“It happens that some machines seem a little more tolerant to certain components than others. For example, I had a 5390 with a bad (or flaky) MIN ADA #2 PWB that caused an overheat condition in one machine. When it was installed in another 5090 it worked fine—go figure! At first I thought it was magic, so I secretly swapped it back to the original copier and was almost out of the building by the time I got the recall. So back I went and swapped it back again. Problem solved? Who knows?

“When I swapped out the Illumination Power supply for the second time, I noticed a pin in P3 was pitted; however, the female part in J3 was fine. By bending the pin slightly to improve the contact inside the female pin the problem went away. About three weeks later I ordered the pin kit and replaced the pin. In this situation, vibrations caused the pin to arc inside the jack. This is not uncommon in machines that are starting to age or have many millions of copies on them. This particular Xerox 5690 has 122 million impressions on its hard meter—impressive, but expected with this work horse.”

If you have any questions or concerns about your Xerox 5090 or Docutech, please feel free to email me with your concerns and I will try to address them as best I can. If there are any technicians or self-service customers out there with a fix on any type of system fault that the service manual doesn’t fix, I would like to know about it. I believe that if we share information on this, we will all benefit from it and make all our lives much more livable.

If you have information that you would like to share with the field, please feel free to submit your ideas to VillageCopierNY@aol.com and I will place your suggestion or fix in the next issue of ENX. From what I hear in the field, it seems that many ex-Xerox technicians miss the field engineering team in Rochester, N.Y. Somehow it was always reassuring to hear a voice on the other end of the phone and a field engineer making a suggestion for a fix on your problem