Thursday 16 July 2015

Bizhub C35 miss feeding

Once again I got a call to fix a jammed Bizhub C35 that the customer could not find the jam. The simple answer to this is that the machine has not jammed. If the user had actually read the screen they would see that the message on the screen says that there has been a miss feed in the tray and can the user check the paper in the tray then open and close the right hand side door. It does not say the word "Jam" anywhere.
The problem occurs when the machine tries to feed the paper during printing but is unable to pick up the sheet from the tray and hence a miss feed. Since no paper actually moved from the tray there is no jam but the error message on the screen looks similar to that of a jam with the message to open and close the right hand side door. The reason to open and close the door is that this is the way that the machines controller clears the error message from memory. However, since it looks like a jam screen most users expect to find a sheet of paper inside the right hand side door and believe that the machine is broken because there is none.
So for these cases I explain that if there is a miss feed displayed on the screen then they need to check the paper loaded in the tray and this is most likely what they will find:
The most common cause is that a sheet of paper is sticking out to the right from somewhere in the middle of the stack of paper. The part that sticks out folds up along the inside of the tray. As the top sheets are fed into the machine the stack decreases until the sticking out sheet gets between the top sheet and the feed roller. I don't know how this happens but it has happened many, many times.
Since the feed roller is mounted to the paper tray it is easy to test the feed by turning the roller by hand. If the paper doesn't feed check that the top sheet is touching the roller. If it is check for the sticking out sheet in the middle of the stack.

P.S. I just had this same problem on an Okifax F-305 so it is not just the Konica machines that do this. The Oki also made a loud shuddering noise as the feed roller skipped across the top of the paper.