Ricoh C3500 - total newbie with dumb questions ;)

Hey Everyone – hoping some of you kind folks can drop some knowledge on a total newbie. Full Disclosure - I’m NOT a copier tech and have relatively limited knowledge about this stuff, but I’m not a complete dummy.

I just got a printer off of Craigslist for next to nothing - a Ricoh C3500 with finisher and appears to have only been used for approximately 140k prints. It spent the last three or four months braving the GA weather outside in a carport so I brought it home and let it acclimate to the inside of my house first. Cranked it on, cleaned it up a bit and started running some test prints. To my complete surprise, everything appears to be working pretty well.

I want to ensure I’m getting the most out of this printer possible. I bought it so I could make a run of photo magazines. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the print quality of the images – I realize it’s still a laser printer and ultimately inferior to digital presses, inkjet, offset, etc, but for my purposes I think it should do fine.

When I’m printing 11x17 the paper has a slightly larger margin on the right side than on the left. Like an eighth of an inch which wouldn’t normally be a biggie, but when printing booklets, it makes the gutter look sloppy. I’ve tried the edge to edge setting and that just makes it much worse. Any suggestions for how to correct this? Happens when I use both the 11x17 trays.

Printer driver – I’ve just got this thing plugged into my PC via USB – using the PCL5c driver – I’ve attached some screenshots – driver software seems very limited as far as options – what am I missing here? I thought this printer was capable at printing higher than 600 DPI?

Admin login – I’m locked out – is there a way to reload this thing?

Firmware – I realize I probably can’t update the firmware myself from what I’ve read online so far – do I need to do this?

Maintenance – I’ve purchased some new toner, but what all do I need to do now and in the future? The printer’s menu only has like two calibration options.

Thank you all - hope to get some guidance here – any input is appreciated!!

 

some pics

 

What you're seeing here is the machine's maximum print size on a sheet of paper. The larger margin on the left is the leading edge of the sheet which always has a bit more of a non-printable area due to what (on an offset press at least) is called a "gripper edge."

The solution for this is to reduce your print to about 96 or 97% which will even out the margins on all 4 sides. Unfortunately there's not a way for you to make the leading edge smaller.

Hope this helps!