Question: Has anyone experienced very low yields from color toners, not particular to model? I’ve been seeing this on the TA-250ci/300ci series, the TA-205ci/255ci series, and others. If so, is there anything anyone has found to fix this? I saw bulletins previously for toner motors, but these machines are not in the range and it’s not just one machine of a series. According to the service status page cartridges are yielding like 900-1000 copies/prints per cartridge. I will check with tech support tomorrow, but I want opinions of the gurus too! Thanks for your opinions.
Answer: What is the coverage?
Question: Sorry I failed to provide adequate info. Assuming you’re referring to the coverage rate listed on the service status page, they are all less than 5% for print and copy.
Answer: For the 255ci, I had a customer use it for 95% printing only and he complained about the yields on the color toners, even though he was mainly printing in black only. We went into print settings and found out even when just printing only in black, the machine uses a small amount of every color in every black & white print. I can’t quite remember the exact setting, but there was a setting to turn off only the colors when printing black & white. After we did that, the page counts went way up.. I hope I didn’t confuse you too much, but check it out, it might just help you out.
Answer: I’m not sure about the Kyocera, as we are new to them, but I do know on some of the Ricoh machines it only adds toner when you specifically make color copies or prints. When the machine is turned on with the door opened, the machine will do a calibration every so many copies. This uses toner from all colors. It does not add toner to the system. It will eventually ask for toner even though no color copies were done. As an example we had an older Ricoh in a Coast Guard station. When picked up 5 years later it had a total of 10 color copies. Yet we know for a fact that we had to put at least 6 of each color tone and 3 developer units over that time. This is why I feel that it is possible for toner to basically “disappear”. It does not get counted as used on a copy/print so the machine does not replenish it. So eventually it will call for that toner. This is why you do not sell a color copier to someone that is worried about the cost difference between B&W and color. Service will take a hit for trying to fix something that is working as designed.
Answer: If the print driver is set for color then what is happening is this. The print job may show up on the PC as black and white. But what the copier does if the driver is set to color mode is print four color black. Basically it uses the three color toners to fill in the spaces between the black dots. Makes a difference in quality print jobs. All color printers and copiers will do the same thing. The other part of what happens when the customer only uses black and white for copying is simple. All color machines will calibrate after a set number of print/copy jobs. They will also calibrate when exiting sleep mode and again when they are turned on. Calibration uses a minute amount of toner, but enough so that eventually the toner, and on some machines developer, has to be replaced.
Answer: Sorry for hijacking this Kyocera thread, but can this calibration feature be switched off or at least deactivated for the return from sleep mode for the Konica Minolta BH-C253 series?
Answer: No. The calibration will always take place. Even if the default settings are black and white for copies and for the print driver settings, the machines will always have to be able to print and copy in color. So in order for best quality output the calibration must take place. You can set the sleep mode to the max settings to spread the calibration times. But I have not seen a way to turn them off. Look at it this way, if you could turn off the calibrations from sleep, then imagine the extra service calls on the machines when someone needs to do a job in color.
Question: Thanks for all the replies. I did find that the default setting in the driver was set to color. I told the customer to have IT load the latest driver and default it to black & white since it’s on the server. By the way, there is a setting to turn the calibration off. Off the top of my head, it was in the service mode or system menu.
Subject: Sharp FO-2081 Won’t Answer Fax Calls
Question: We placed this machine around 6 months ago and it was working fine. Then the customer calls that it isn’t receiving faxes. You can hear the incoming ring, but the machine ignores it. I checked all the settings, everything is as it should be. The machine sends just fine. Since then I have updated the firmware twice, but no go, and then installed a new fax board, and still no good. I have loaned them a fax machine, and when plugged into the same cord, the loaner works fine. Anyone have a clue? What about all these fax soft switches? I have never really had to mess around in there.
Answer: Have you tried clearing image memory? (66-10) Have had some surges and this seems to cure it.
Question: Thanks. That took care of it. Got a fairly long-winded problem off my back. What I don’t understand is why wouldn’t it just print the images in memory?
Answer: Glad you got it working. I can’t remember what machine I was I on, I think it was a Sharp (I work on too many machines), but I think it was called user management, and a setting in sub menu was “receive to memory” that would not allow anything to print out! Turned this off, and it was all good. Just something to keep in the back of your mind if it comes back. Later.
Answer: Glad I could help. Don’t know why this works but it does.
