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During the spring of 1975 I was servicing a Xerox 7000 at a law
firm in midtown Manhattan. The customer was one of my best because
the operator really cared about his copier and took care of it in
ways that made me feel special. On or near St Patrick’s Day I
received a disturbing service call from the law firm. The service
calls were placed about 8:30 am every day for about two weeks. The
complaint was always the same. After the machine warmed up, they
would start copying documents and the odd thing was they were
always blank. The key operator would check the toner cartridge and
make sure all the corotrons were plugged in and he would always
load fresh paper in the main tray. They would leave the machine
alone for about two hours and then try it again at 10:30 and it
would perform perfectly. Copy quality was excellent, paper
handling was great and everything was hunky dory. By the time I
responded to the customer’s site the problem had passed.
When I tried to trouble shoot this phenomenon I found everything
was where it was supposed to be. All currents were checked and all
circuits were double-checked. As the problem continued, I was on
the phone with Field Engineering on a daily basis. The prevailing
thought was that an intermittent problem was probably causing
this. As frustrations continued to build the prevailing thought,
at this time, was to shotgun the problem. We replaced every
component and circuit board in the marking and imaging circuit. We
even replaced the Xerographic module for good measure. The results
were always the same: blank copies in the morning. Three weeks
into this problem Field Engineering sent down two of their top
thinkers and now there were at least six people at the machine
site every morning. The key operator turned on the machine for the
day at 8:00 am as usual and on the last day we were there, as a
team, my key operator greeted us with sunglasses to which I
disregarded as Tim showing off. Later on, in casual way, I
inquired as to why he was wearing the sunglasses when we came in
and he responded with something that never occurred to me or
anyone of us clear thinkers on the team.
The law firm was located on the 40th floor of a skyscraper in
Rockefeller Center and the rising (spring) sun (to the east) was
rising into the room. Guess where the machine was? Yep, the paper
tray was right smack in the rising sun’s light path. What was odd
about this phenomenon was that there was a cover on the paper tray
that protected the rising tray. How exactly was the rising
sunlight having an effect on the photoreceptor belt? The main
paper tray is indeed protected by a metal cover that let in just
enough light to wash out the photoreceptor drum rendering it
unusable. Moral of the story: When a customer calls for service
and tells you what the problem is, look around and see if he has
on a pair of sunglasses. We might think that the sunglasses were
the key operators way of staying in vogue. Or maybe there was
another message there.
Old man winter is at our doorstep again and the cold weather has
an effect on everything even our copiers and printers. Case in
point was a printer in the financial district that always jammed
in the morning when it was turned on. Note: This Docutech was
serviced by me for the past two years and ran flawlessly all
summer and into the fall. By early December the complaint was
always the same: The Docutech would jam every morning when it was
turned on and the first two to five hundred copies were made.
Gradually the jamming went away almost like a bad dream. By 9:30
the problem went away completely and they were able to program the
machine to their little hearts content. And, that was about the
time we would show up for our first call of the day.
I don’t know about you but when I responded to a service call, I
always expected to see something tangible. When there is no
visible problem I sometimes jumped to the conclusion that the key
operator wanted some time off, so he invented a problem. Needless
to say in my tenure as a technician I have seen a lot of weird
happenings and would always take the key operator aside and try to
extract as much information as I could and always keeping the sun
glasses in mind.
This may sound insane, but I sometimes took notes as I questioned
the key operator and when the problem would not repeat itself
again, I sometimes would camp out at the customers location to
observe the copier in action and take additional notes. Over the
next several days this particular problem was shared among several
technicians in my work group and the notes came in handy but they
eventually led us nowhere. Oh well, back to square one.
Day three: I arrived at 8:00 AM to watch the customer turn on the
printer and program it for its first run. When it went into the
ready state, “start print” was pressed and the machine started to
go through initialization and copy quality checks. So far so good.
When the printer went into print, it ran about a dozen copies then
jammed. The system fault codes were always different. Sometimes it
would be a 08-xxx code or a 10-xxx code and sometimes a 09-xxx
code. They would alternate for about 300 to 400 copies and then
almost by the divine hand of the Xerox gods the problems went away
all by itself. I watched the printer for four hours with only two
or three regular jams.
After my first observation, with no apparent jamming problem, I
felt as if I had to do something. Exactly what I was supposed to
do was not very clear to me, so I went back to the basics and
started to check the main paper tray height and parallelism
adjustments. With one minor adjustment the main tray was in
factory specifications. The tray three blower was checked and the
blower motor ‘O’ ring was replaced. Compressed air was used to
blast out paper lint in the micro switches on tray three. All
belts were examined and were found to be in factory
specifications. None of the ‘rubber’ belts were anywhere due and
they all had a good texture to them. In diagnostics all limit
switches were checked and found to be in excellent working order.
All slip clutches were checked and found to be in serviceable
condition with no abnormalities.
The processor was checked to insure it was mated to the finisher
properly and all guides were properly positioned to insure that
the paper was guided properly from the processor to the finisher.
All rollers and belts in the finisher were checked and found to be
in excellent condition. After 5 days of finding nothing out of the
ordinary, we were starting to think there was a paranormal entity
involved. And I say this as a person who never had a vision of a
ghost or demon. But what the heck else could it be? You start to
wonder and, you give up and tell the customer to deal with it. On
day six I had no fingernails left to bite on and I sat there
waiting for the key operator to arrive. As I sat there I noticed
there was no paper near the Docutech. When he finally showed up I
mentioned it to him and he said “no-problem, it’s in the hallway
over there.” Hallway? There was no hallway, what the heck was he
talking about? Sure enough there was a metal fire door at the end
of the print shop. When the door was opened to get the paper out,
I almost froze to death. The paper was stored in a breezeway that
was open to the elements.
I wondered whether the storage of paper was important. Remember
the sunglasses? The key operator rolled in four cases of paper and
set it down near the Docutech. The cases were cold to the touch
and it was in the low 30’s outside (at the time). For some reason
the sunglasses were on my mind and when the carton was opened
several reams were placed on the main tray and sure enough the
jamming problem started. Just for a lark, I located two reams of
paper that was stored near another machine and loaded them in the
main tray. It was programmed for 1000 copies and it ran perfectly
to its conclusion and there wasn’t a single jam. This is about the
time I heard the twilight theme music. When the run was over I
re-loaded the customer’s cold paper and went back to work and
there was one jam after another. This went on until the paper
reached the room temperature. Then almost by magic the jamming
went away all by itself. The moral of this story is: When you
store paper, the breezeway should not be your first choice for
storage, especially in the winter.
It’s always good to hear from friends especially when it brings
good memories back. Please contact me at
VillageCopierNY@aol.com
if you have any questions.