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Oct. 6, 2003
Note: seek the help of your technician first. I am not responsible if you damage your own machine. I've used these tips with good results and your results may vary. Use these methods only if you're completely stuck and need to keep printing on a large job before the technician can help you (like on a weekend). Image Defect Repair Solutions: Recently we've had some label stock come apart inside the printer. Specifically in the transfer section where the paper/label comes into contact with the transfer belt prior to going into the fuser portion. Anyhow, a portion of the label material pulled off the backing in the printer sticking first to the image transfer belt and then partly wedged into the yellow image unit. The fix was two-fold. First I ordered a yellow image unit. Unfortunately the label material had stuck right onto the green light sensitive drum of the image unit and there were some abrasion marks on the unit. The technician pulled back the black plastic cover (flexible stuff) on either end leading to possible removal of the image unit drum/developer. Once it's opened like that you can try to fish out any paper or label material much easier. Then slap it back together and see if it works. If it does you're lucky. If not you'll need a replacement image unit. The fix for the label material stuck to the transfer belt was much easier. Although finding the image defect may take some time. First, get some leather gloves. Then open the transfer unit door so that you can see the image transfer belt. Don't touch the belt with your fingers! Now use the glove on one hand to turn the white gears on the right side of the belt. Keep turning until you find where the label material is stuck on. Carefully with clean fingers or tweezers pull off as much of the material as you can. Usually there will still be some label adhesive remaining on the belt. Now get some Q-tips and Windex or equivalent ammonia window cleaner. Wet the end of the q-tip and rub it carefully on the remaining adhesive until it dissolves. Use the other end (clean end) of the q-tip to wipe any excess material off the belt. Repeat if necessary until all sticky stuff is gone. Carefully blow some air onto the belt to evaporate the Windex. (you can see it) Now turn the belt to find any more contaminants stuck to it and clean those off. Remember, don't touch it with your fingers and don't forget to dry any Windex on the belt before turning it. This should restore full image quality unless the belt has been scratched or damaged in some other way. Try to use the lowest temperature setting. In other words "paper" or "Thick1". The slower and hotter the label stock runs through the machine the greater the chance of it coming apart inside the machine. You'll have to experiment a bit. I started at "Thick3" and now use "Thick1" for Avery and other stocks. Also, the unit generally prints letter size paper/labels sideways instead of straight up like most printers. The reason is it prints faster sideways as it's 1/2 of an 11x17. Anyhow, I found many of the Avery "clean edge" labels tend to come apart in the printer simply as a label design fault. With the "clean edge" design because there is label material that's missing it's easier for the labels to peel off when the stock is bent... which is what happens in the printer. Avery refuses to guarantee their label stock in colour printers saying the paper path isn't straight like a b&w laser. This is a dumb misconception. The path on most colour lasers is the same as b&w lasers. From my viewpoint this is a cop-out by Avery. So use "Thick1" and print it using the "letter-R" orientation. If you want to save money on larger flyers print one side colour and the other b&w. For brochures done on folded 11x17 (4 letter pages) can be printed first with b&w, then put into TRAY2, and printed in colour plus folding on the second side. This way you save quite a bit on printing costs. TRAY2 works much better than TRAY1 when the paper printed one side has a bit of a curl as TRAY2 has thicker and more paper guides in it's tray than the other tray. Folded And/Or Stapled Document Printing Advice: Gently squeeze together the paper holder arm in the FN-8 finisher and pull it 1/4 inch away from the machine while it's still being held on by it's spring, then turn it upside down and refasten it. This way when you print many folded/stapled documents then will fall to the floor instead of being held in the lower tray which quickly fills up. Now you can just let it print a big job without having to empty the lower tray every 10minutes. A convenient little modification!
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Copyright
2001-2003 Peter Ferlow