The magenta print was from the first try. I had no idea what caused the marks so I pulled the drum out and had look at the charge unit but didn't see anything so I shone my torch into the machine to have a look at the developer unit. I couldn't see anything on the mag roller but am sure I saw a shadow move under the cyan unit. After a bit more looking I didn't see anything so tried the gradation prints again. This time the colours were fine but I had a void through the black as seen in the above picture. So I am thinking what the hell could cause a void to move from one image unit to another?
I pulled the black drum out and shone my torch into the machine and again saw something move over the laser glass and disappear under the drum mounting rail. So I got down lower and looked into the hole for the laser glass cleaning wand and got face to face with a medium size cockroach. It was sitting on top of the laser unit and seemed to be dazed. My guess is that it was walking back and forth across the laser unit occasionally blocking the path of the lasers and causing the voids in the prints. The dazed look was probably because the roach had been blinded by the lasers.
As I watched it crawled right and up toward the registration rollers. I had to get it out because I didn't want it to make a mess on the laser glasses or worse. What would happen if it got into the high voltage supply behind the image units?
Since I last saw the roach heading toward the rego rollers I opened the right hand door of the machine and was sure I saw something disappear into the tray 1 feed station so I pulled all that out. Nothing there. So I pulled the registration assembly out. Still nothing. So it must still be on the laser unit so I pull all the drums, developer units and image transfer belt out but I still can't see it. Next out comes the power supply and then the laser assembly.
I look into the now hollow machine and see no sign of the cockroach.
I look down at the laser unit in my hands and can see a leg poking out from underneath the end of the laser unit. I carefully tip the laser onto its side and the cockroach immediately runs and hides in a small hollow space next to one of the skew adjustment motors. Aha, cornered.
At this point I think I should mention that I have an irrational fear of anything with more than four legs. Insects really creep me out, spiders are worse and the bigger they are the easier it is see how freaky looking they are. So being this close to a decent size cockroach is really getting my heart pounding. But this copier must be fixed!
So I stick my screwdriver into the hole and flick the cockroach out. It went nuts on the floor trying to find a place to hide and I dropped the laser unit and both tried to jump on the cockroach while at the same time jump away from it. Unfortunately with all the parts I had pulled off the photocopier spread around the floor around me the cockroach had many places to hide.
So there I am in the middle of this office shoving copier parts aside with one foot and stamping the floor trying to end this cockroach. I am sure I didn't impress any of the girls working there. But I did get the cockroach.
After that I put the copier back together again and everything works as it should.
I am just glad it wasn't a big Huntsman spider in there or I would have had to call another tech to come and get it out. Either that or write off the machine.
