I recently took over as production manager for our small printing company. I bought a new laptop and had a world of problems with finding the right driver to print 11 X 17 Tabloid. I am having a WORLD of problems with defective consumables!!

When I say world, I mean..... (replaced at one time or another in 3 months)
14 imaging units, 11 toner cartridges, 6 transfer belts, 3 fusers, 4 waste cartridges, exit tupe and auger for waste toner and a gear in the machine

I was using Xerox business paper and moved to Husky 60lb offset smooth...
This machine has been "refilled" with toner (maintaining properly, not to low and not topped off)

What am I missing here???? Bad Machine? Xerox a year ago "swapped" the old Phaser 7400 out...

BTW: We print newsletters, 4 page, tabloid, double sided, mainly black and white, one page color.... I only print about 5,000 a month.....
No heavy ink laying, really plain and simple

Any advise for a beginner printer would be FANTASTIC!!!!!

If you don't mind my asking, when you say the consumables and durables were defective, what exact symptoms did you see from each in your list?

List of issues....

Since November 07 - Strange clicking noise coming from Imaging unit area (the tech kept saying its an imaging unit, no print quality problems, so delt with the clicking untill all units were replaced) Every consumable has been replace more than once since then and still have clicking. (LOUD at times)
Imaging units - usually banding, streaking, blotching etc (color issues)
Toners - Same issues as imaging units

It got to the point to where xerox was saying that the machine is so sensitive that changing the imaging units and toners at the same time would fix quality problems because one is ruining the other.

Transfer belt.... February (ish) there was a "bad batch" went through about 3 or 4 of them ripping at seam. Also blotching problem once and they claimed it defective.

Fuser- premature, needing replacement, blotching on all colors....


I say defective- simply because thats the term used when we send them back. Odviously I could not have 20 consumables over the last 4 months defective.

With going through all of this, they finally went to the next thing and said it was the Husky 60lb offset paper I was using was ruining the machine. Some Xerox people agree and some don't. I ordered Xerox Business 24lb (crt) and am still having banding issues/ consumable issues. So odviously not the paper.....

Hope this helps.... again, thanks for responding!

We print CD covers - lots of heavy coverage on glossy paper. I have no experience with the 7400, but I have had similar experiences with other office printers (Xerox 6250, HP9500). With the HP9500 I had a lot of problems with Magenta drums in particular (toner leaking all over the page for example) and was told by HP that I needed to change the drum and the toner to cure the problem. This worked - as long as the replacement cartridge wasn't also bad. We print exclusively on heavy glossy paper, which seems to be harder on the drums. We had ridiculous problems with premature wear of the drums, causing color to fade in sections across the drums ( rainbow effect on grayscale photos). We do about 5000 12x18 pages per month.

My first solution was to buy a second HP9500 as a backup, but since the problem seemed to be the consumables, this was of little help. At first HP was good about replacing the consumables, but eventually they started blaming the paper I was using. I guess it's OK to use 100# gloss once in a while, but not all the time.

Finally, at my wits end, last summer I leased a Canon Imagepress C1 with a service contract, even though I still had 18 months left on the newer HP's lease. Big difference. I was spending about $2000 a month on consumables before and now my click charge is less than $600 per month. (My click charge is the same per page for any size sheet, so I make sure we fill the page with images.) I'm not saying that the C1 is trouble free - It does require regular maintenance and I would not want to have one without a service contract, but we usually can get a tech here within a few hours of placing the call.

In my opinion, one of the problems with the office-class printers is that the toner cartridges and drums are quite complex, containing several components. This tends to make them user-servicable - most problems that crop up can be fixed by changing a drum / imaging unit. But if the consumables themselves are bad, it can get crazy. By contrast, the C1's toner cartridges are just bins that contain toner. I have yet to see any bad ones, and i doubt that I will. The toner is the only thing I change. anything else is a (free) service call).

Bottom line is that even with the $1000 a month lease for the C1, I am saving money and having a lot less stress. (I use the HP now for printing invoices and price lists - general office type printing, maybe 50 or 100 pages a day on plain paper and it works fine.) The C1 is actually only half as fast as the HP, but it can handle heavier stock, has much more consistent color, a better finish on glossy stock, can store a ton a jobs right on the printer, much better user interface, etc, etc., and most of all, I don't have to waste any time keeping it running.

I'm sure there are other printers besides the C1 that would offer similar benefits. I'm just suggesting that it may be time cut your losses and consider moving up to a production printer with a service contract. I wish I had done it sooner.

Thanks for responding CD GUY. After reading that, Im just glad I am not the only one in the world that has this problem. Even if it is with a different printer.

Our stories are quite similar, except I have a service contract through xerox, therefor all the consumables that are replaced are free if I havn't run through more than 50%. They prorate the consumable after that. So your problem was cost, my problem is I CAN'T run my business!!!

CD GUY, I do understand your pay per click and I can see how it was cheaper just to go with that. I am on a pay per click with a Xerox 5500 black and white. I have a really low payment a month and my overage charges are pretty good as well.

Friday, I called my leasing company, asked them the pay off, just so I can get rid of this crappy printer!! I also called the leasing company I am leasing my other printer from and I'm looking into a trade in with them to get into something else!

I can't affort a huge production printer at $1000 a month is the biggest problem, and something of that caliber would be an over kill as far as quality, I print mostly text with little graphics. Thats why I went with the Xerox 7400 because it can print pretty decent as far as marketing material etc.

Does anyone have any opinions on leasing and pay per click?

Anyone have experience in trading in a printer (that is leased for another year) to trade in and lease another one?

Thanks for detailing what all is giving you problems. One "dirty secret" I've found myself with digital equipment that while in theory your customers might expect it should print perfectly with the touch of a button, the "analog" components still develop often annoying faults that must be dealt with to be economical -- for example, drums often develop small faults or you just have to run them a lot longer than their maximum quality, or fusers sometimes develop hard spots that don't affect 90% of work but do show issues in 10%. My experience is all with canon equipment, which I'm generally happy with.

Having two or more machines capeable of the job you need to print is the only way to go in my book. Not only do you then have a backup, but if you have a drum or other component with an issue you can easily use one to print jobs that don't show the issue and the other for prints that do so as to get a lot more life out of consumables. I try to keep the drums in one of ours printing very well for covers, centerfolds, etc., and then run from ~110 to ~180% yeild on the consumables in the other machine for mainly-text pages, etc.