XPE-10-4402 error on one specific stock

Forgive me if this is posted somewhere else but it didn't come up in the search engine for this specific fault code combination ... I am trying to run PVC 10 mil stock and until recently I was able to get halfway decent quality from it. For some reason the machine is more forgiving on some color jobs but this particular job I have tried in color and as grayscale and it just won't get very far. I had a job for 400 of this same material and was able to get a little over 200 done before switching to new box of the stock, then it went haywire on the greyscale job. I don't know if a change of room environment, a change in material composition (how the batch of PVC was created) or something else is causing these issues ...

Only one side of the stock is fusing correctly on the grayscale job - regardless of whether I try to run it as color or black only. It looks like little bubbles on the side that isn't fusing and you can easily scratch off or rub off the image... I might get a few sheets through but both sides have the same background and only one is fusing ... there are different text items on the other side, so it is not a complete duplicate of side 1. It has been creating a buildup of fuser oil on the sheet, which eventually leads to a stripe down one side where no image is fuser at all. This then eventually transfers to the PR belt.

The machine now won't even try to warm up to print this stock and gives me an XPE-10-4402 lower temperature in external heat roll 2 fault... I ran more than 25,000 postcards (4 up images totaling about that) with little problems on 9 point C2S stock. I tried changing transfer and detack settings and so far nothing has fixed the image issues. Now the igen4 acts like the machine cannot warm up to the GSM needed for the stock. The temperature seems to be in range but the humidity is in the red zone ... but I was getting the image quality issues even when the machine was happy with the temperature and humidity range. So I think the room environment is playing into the quality control issue but not sure about the low temperature fault... So far the techs have blamed the stock and don't have any solutions, though they are researching it. I half heartedly agree it is the stock because it is not absorbing the oil - but I have run this stock thousands of times with no major issues like this ... The oil streak is always in the same spot, too... I don't want to keep running it and changing PR belts every time we have to run this stock because we won't get much life out of them.

The tech who came yesterday and back today to fix another issue checked through diagnostics and said the lamps were turning off and on like they should be - but obviously there is an issue somewhere causing the xpe-10-4402 on just this type of stock. HELP! (And no, unfortunately it is not stock from the Xerox approved media list so that isn't helping my cause - but I am locked into that stock for right now).

The other fault code was xpe-10-3111 but it went away after a restart.

 

try to run in EIP mode? crazy slow but that might tell you if the non fusing is fixable, maybe using nvm settings...?

10 mil PVC though.... eek. i think it would be difficult to stick a toner to that, on a perfectly operational machine. I had vinyl "teslin" i used to do, but it was nowhere near 10 mil.

 

I may have resolved the fusing issue (at least for now) thanks to a suggestion I saw in a thread somewhere else on here … I tried different transfer and detach settings like suggested for fuser picking and image deletions and it didn't help. Someone suggested changing the paper thickness to a higher setting (I went from 350 to 400 or more) and so far it has helped the fusing issue but not the related Low Temperature in External Heat Roll 2 faults I keep getting, mostly with this stock. I seem to have okay luck with 9-10 point 2 sided card stocks which is what we run the most anyway. I don't know if the fault is related to a lamp, bearing or thermistor… but the unfortunate thing is that our tech was out last week and did fuser maintenance and I presume he would have seen if any of those things were going to be a problem.

I am pretty sure our room environment is not helping much (60-70 degrees with humidity generally less than 10 percent for the past week). We probably are not getting optimum quality with those conditions.

The other issue with the PVC stock is it cannot absorb fuser oil so sometimes it ends up on the PR belt. I get really tired of limping along from one problem t0 the next, especially when there are things we cannot control or fix ourselves. I rue the day we started using specialty stock like that because we have enough problems getting "normal" papers and card stock through …

On the plus side, between this forum and suggestions from the techs and remote tech specialists, I generally have a wide range of things i can try before throwing up my hands and saying "I give up" and calling Service. I have noticed a lot of times when I talk to a remote tech specialist many of their suggestions are ones I already tried before calling them… unfortunately new issues come up and we don't know where to start. I am thankful for the expertise on this forum, even though sometimes it doesn't fix my issues but at least it rules some out.

 

you environment and your experience sounds very familiar. none of my paper is "qualified"if you got the advice from here to try and setup a stock thats thicker than actual. thats probably me. adjusting transfer and detack, also me. but thats usually to stop the "snowing" effect in transfer, or to cut. full color coverage will have snowflakes in it.... Or to cut down on static a bit. doesn't affect fusing. happens the most in rough finishes, or matte.

I have SO much trouble with static this time of year... its automatic that I will be zapped grabbing paper from the top, or even through my shoe kicking the cart out lol

had a few problems with a thermistor being incorrectly aligned.... and then also had a problem with a broken lamp wire... but id think you should get undertemp warnings for that.

 

I am in Indianapolis so our weather conditions are probably about the same. This PVC stock does make it easy to get zapped - that's for sure. Well if it was your suggestions - thank you very much - so far it has helped. At our previous location we had two iGEN3s and one was in a warehouse. It was so NOT awesome to run in the winter. We had to build a tent around it and put in a humidifier just to get the thing to run. Some of my co-workers nicknamed it Camp David (since my name is David and I was in there a lot).

 

That's great! picturing it... I built a tent on the back of the feeders once, and stuck a humidifier back there. then someone stole my humidifier-I never found it.. got zapped so hard today, my right arm was numb for a few seconds...its BAD. 50 degree drop over the day!

you guys are sometimes a little bit warmer and more humid than us, but not by much... Mother in law lives an hour or so east of Indy...

 

OK. So your suggestion did help us get better quality out of the 10 mil PVC. Any suggestions for constant jamming on heavier PVC? The odd thing is that both the 10 mil and 15 mil stocks are rated at similar GSM of 350-355… I have a project for 300 menus on the heavier stock and I bet last time I went through 50-100 sheets in jams, clean up sheets and sheets getting stuck to the fuser roll. I keep getting multi feed errors and have already cleaned sensors, cheated the doors to help cut down on some of the static…

 

multi-feed is one of my least favorite problems. In my case, it has to do with VERY curly paper, and how it sits in the drawer, vs where the air knives(thats a kodak term, xerox may call them something else?) where those are at vs the stock.. if you are truly Multi-feeding, meaning when it jams, you pull out many sheets....

here's what I do: defeat the vertical door sensor on feeders, grab a flashlight, and watch the drawer go up. the feed head will check itself, and you can watch how close the stack is to it. This gets nauseating for me, because we use 10pt 1s that comes from a roll. spend all day hand bending...or setting spacers beneath the stack to get it to feed right....

-check the little sensor coming out the feeder. "tar-multifeed" I have to clean my CONSTANTLY because of paper dust.

now, if its a static problem, that causes the multifeed... <shrugs shoulders> get some tinsel and some dryer sheets. lol

or is it false multifeeds? check paper thickness setting....