Xerox docucolor 242 - Skewing/Slanted issues :(

[thldesign]

Hi Guys!

Im new to the digital production printing I bought a Xerox docucolor 242 and I have since had it serviced etc spent a fair bit on it so far as it was not working in 'perfect' condition.

I have since had an engineer out on a number of occasions and its now up and running however I am very new to it and today I found this issue:

I have to manual duplex the prints as the paper kept getting stuck as the engineer said a part needed replacing which was the one near the right hand side door the unit inside there but its costing me too much as yet to replace! He has since turned the duplexing off but dont know how he has done this etc (from the settings im guessing) as I was thinking today to turn it back on and see if there is still the issue with thin 170gsm paper supposed to 250gsm it was running?

However today I tried to print off some leaflets so what I did was on a B4 paper I put 4 x A6 Size on and when they printed I managed to manually shift the design so the cut marks more or less add up which took ages and a few sheets wasted. However once it added up I noticed nearly ever couple pages printed where the same and get the odd one or two being different.. Should this be the cake or should they all print of exact?

I am also noticing the paper is slightly slanted nothing major on some but some more obvious than others..

It causes a big problem when im cutting them as I have to cut them at an angle to assure a straight finish so I have to manually match the crop marks and then cut them..

Could the paper be an issue as when im selecting the pdf its coming as on the options as JIS B4 which is different size for b4? or have I ordered the wrong paper as I noticed the fitting is fairly loose too. The B4 paper size I ordered was 250 x 353.

Thanks guys!

P.s. I am not very technical at all with the printer as I am starting up with very very basic stuff.

 

[Jeff]

Are you using the Fiery RIP?

If so, from command workstation also do a tray alignment which will print some sheets and have you enter values to adjust +/- on three sides. This finetunes the x and y and skew a little bit.

I believe some docucolor 242/252s were also retrofitted with a thumbscrew skew adjustment screw. See if yours might have this or if it could be added.

On ours we replaced the right door assembly; the small diameter metal roller there was making a squealing sound and we found duplex became very erratic and replacing it solved this after about 3 years use, although we always had some skew when duplexing and mostly ran manually flipping anything that was a long run or difficult paper.

We also had an oversize high capacity feeder and it did a much better job than the bypass or built-in trays. The OHCF was OK after we dialed in the x and y for a stock or after it hadn't run for a while; the bypass and the built in drawers were much looser and more difficult to get consistent feeding from (we barely used the built in drawers running 99% through the OHCF - well worth the investment in it.)

 

[thldesign]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply I did the tray alignment which was off massively! Thanks for that. I have the OHCF but apparently a cable is snapped on the draw the thin cables and its costing a fortune to replace so until then I am not using it..
I have been using the BYPASS tray this morning before I did the tray alignment any reason why no 2 sheets are exactly the same? I manually duplexed around 20 sheets and all of them were similar and then 10 were completely off..

Also whats better manually duplexing or using the duplex unit built in?

Thanks

 

[Jeff]

With our 242, we mostly printed on 28# (70#) hammermill, 32# (80#) mohawk color copy, 20# xerox bond, 20# hammermill tidal, and 8pt kromekote c1s.
We did a little bit of 12pt kromekote c2s and some 10pt kromekote c2s, and some 100# coated cover.
We printed about 1.5 million impressions on it.

Paper registration was the 242's weakest aspect for us -- when running kromekote I made my life easier when cutting by changing from 1/8" bleeds to 1/4" bleeds when possible (overall it was a great printer for us and I had zero regrets about buying it... very very solid machine and an incredible value for the use we got out of it.)

On ours, I found I had to do an x and y adjustment once a day which was a little bit time consuming but I could usually get what I wanted within 4-10 test prints and then it would hold solid for the rest of the run.

I only duplexed 20#, 28#, and 32# using the duplexer. Ours would only duplex plain or heavy 1 but not coated or heavy 2.

I found that manually duplexing was always more accurate than auto-duplexing; the only problems with manually duplexing were:
1.) sometimes I would have to do a new x and y because of how the paper changed dimensionally slightly after being printed on side 1, and
2.) because it doesn't have a decurler, on the heavy kromekote and c1s kromekote, I had to be careful to print the right side first or else if it curled, it was difficult to get to run for the second side. When I printed the coated side first, I sometimes would have to manually roll the paper to get the curl out of the leading edge which wasn't fun with 1000 sheets. So I learned to get a feel for which side to print first, and to remove the sheets from the output bin and weight them if not running the second side for a while to not let them curl.

I did find the OHCF to be by far the most reliable feeder with it's longer edge for the paper to slide against to keep it straighter. I used the bypass once or twice when it was down and my results were not as good. I only once tried to use the drawers under the 242 when the OHCF had an issue and I gave up and spent 30 minutes to fix the OHCF roller because ours was so much better for me. With the drawers I just wasn't getting as consistent of a feed. (and they had almost zero use.) But with the OHCF prints were fairly consistent (one monthly job on 20# bond had a rectangle which was 3/16" from the top, bottom, and right side of the sheet and it would hold steady for 1200 prints but I usually did an xy adjustment right before printing it.)