16 Jun
2012
16 Jun
'12
5:33 p.m.
No the unit I already returned (unopened) wasnt designed for big batches or even longevity
necessarily, but document feeding, the crux of the matter, is no feat. People have and I
seem to recall there even being one commercial product that turned a copier into a
document scanner. Accurate and reliable document feeders are often left on the side of the
road.
16 Jun
16 Jun
5:51 p.m.
On 06/16/2012 01:33 PM, Chris Tofu wrote:
No the unit I already returned (unopened) wasnt
designed for big
batches or even longevity necessarily, but document feeding, the crux
of the matter, is no feat. People have and I seem to recall there
even being one commercial product that turned a copier into a
document scanner. Accurate and reliable document feeders are often
left on the side of the road.
You haven't had to work on many of them, have you. ;) I worked on
paper feed systems (Ziyad feeders for Canon CX engine-based laser
printers, as well as the printers themselves) for several years when
those printers were en vogue.
That experience left me with the sincere hope that I never have to
work on another paper-handling device again, as well as the insistence
that any printer I own will be built to print all day, every day and
likely end up being a two-man lift. (which they both are, HP 8100DN and
8550DN)
Yes, paper feeding is, in fact, a feat. Yes, it is done all over the
place, and has been for many decades, but that doesn't make it any less
a feat, nor does it make it any less failure-prone. Document feeding in
particular is much harder, because (in comparison to printing) it
suddenly matters if you pick up two sheets at once, and you can often
bet that the paper is of less-than-straight-off-the-ream edge quality
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA
7:47 p.m.
On 06/16/2012 01:33 PM, Chris Tofu wrote:
And I can assure you, that having worked on various printers, copiers,
etc over the years, that the CX engien is one of the bttter ones :-)
Some time back I bought a cheap photocopier, the sort where you put the
orignail one sheet at a timne on a sliding glass platen. There were 2
models in the shop. On the cheaper one, you fet the blank paper in one
shet at a time, when you slid a sheet in, the machine started up. On the
more expensive one, there was a paper tray for a pile of blank paper, it
pickup ou one sheet at time when you press thed 'copy' button.
I bougthe the cheaper one. The only advantage of the more expensive model
was if you wanted to make serveral copies of one original, something I
rarely need to do. THe disadvantage of it was that it had a paper pickup
system, which epxperience suggests is going to jam all too often and is
going to nbeed new rollers from time to time.
No the unit I already returned (unopened) wasnt
designed for big
batches or even longevity necessarily, but document feeding, the crux
of the matter, is no feat. People have and I seem to recall there
even being one commercial product that turned a copier into a
document scanner. Accurate and reliable document feeders are often
left on the side of the road.
You haven't had to work on many of them, have you. ;) I worked on
paper feed systems (Ziyad feeders for Canon CX engine-based laser
printers, as well as the printers themselves) for several years when
those printers were en vogue.
That experience left me with the sincere hope that I never have to
work on another paper-handling device again, as well as the insistence
I've only ever met one printer that can feed in a new roll of paper
automatixally and get it right more than 10% or the time. And that's the
HP9866, which works just abotu every time without problems. They got it
iright in the early 1970s... Of course that thing is built like a brick
prvy...
that any printer I own will be built to print all day,
every day and
likely end up being a two-man lift. (which they both are, HP 8100DN and
8550DN)
Yes, paper feeding is, in fact, a feat. Yes, it is done all over the
place, and has been for many decades, but that doesn't make it any less
a feat, nor does it make it any less failure-prone. Document feeding in
There are many provblesm. Sheets will stick together. Crumpled corners,
etc, common on old documents you want to scan, will cause problems. And
while it might work OK wen new, it will wear out (paper is suprisingly
abrasive). If you can't get new rollers, or can't make your own
replacements, you are going to have big problems.
particular is much harder, because (in comparison to
printing) it
suddenly matters if you pick up two sheets at once, and you can often
bet that the paper is of less-than-straight-off-the-ream edge quality
-tony
8:12 p.m.
--- On Sat, 6/16/12, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
Document feeding in
particular is much harder, because (in comparison to
printing) it
suddenly matters if you pick up two sheets at once, and you
can often
bet that the paper is of less-than-straight-off-the-ream
edge quality
And therein lies the rub. Or rather, the jam and misfeed.
The easiest kind of paper in the world to pick and feed is cheap, generic 20 pound copier
paper. The kind you buy by the case with the office supply store's name brand on it.
It's rough enough that it's easy to pick, slick enough that it rarely sticks
together, and is overall a very, very easy thing for a printer (or document feeder) to
pick and feed.
High quality, expensive paper - while it looks nice - is very difficult to pick and feed.
Usually it's much thicker, slicker, and heavier. One customer I had was printing lots
of mailings on a 4350. The tray with the letterhead in it needed new rollers constantly,
since just a little wear would cause the machine to fail to pick the slick, expensive,
pre-printed forms. And even the third party replacement rollers, when new, had issues
picking this paper. You had to use HP genuine rollers. But, the same tray, loaded with
cheap copy paper, never had problems. You could run the rollers until they were slick and
shiny and they'd still pick the "Bent Staple Brand Office Paper" with no
problems.
When scanning docs, you run into problems with not only the paper stock, but the age and
condition of the paper. Manuals that have lived their entire life in a three ring binder
will be curly at the edge, and the places where the holes are punched will usually cause
the pages to hang up against each other. Magazines with the spines cut off are too slick
to auto-feed in most machines. Book paper is an unusual size, and tends to get
"fuzzy" at the edges.
Basically, what I'm trying to say, is despite the fact that "picking and feeding
paper" is a known and solved problem - "picking and feeding clean new paper to
print on" and "picking and feeding old documents to scan" are really two
separate problems with two different sets of variables. Yes, they're similar in
implementation, but the latter requires more precision and more safeguards against
misfeeding than the former, since the way clean new copy paper behaves is very
predictable, and the way random 30 year old once-bound-but-now-is-not paper behaves is
not.
And, related (yet off the off-topic) anecdote - I once serviced an HP 4250 with a MAMMOTH
paper jam in the front of the machine. It was as though somehow the printer had picked and
fed 20 sheets at once! To the point where I had to dismantle a fair bit of it to get it
all out. Nothing seemed damaged, the rollers were in good condition, and upon reassembly,
everything appeared normal, and the printer printed without misfeeding. I ran a long paper
path test to test for misfeeds and jams, and could find nothing else wrong. At this point,
the printer was low on paper, so I grabbed a fresh ream out of the case next to the
printer to refill it before I left. The paper was Hewlett-Packard branded. Like all reams
of paper, the stack of 500 sheets comes wrapped in a paper(or heavy plastic) wrapper,
which is folded around the stack and glued. Well, it would seem that when this ream, and
evidently the ream just before it, was wrapped off-center. The flaps on one
end were too large, and the flaps on the other end were too short - not long enough to
completely cover the end of the paper. Thus, the glue that's supposed to glue the
wrapper together around the paper was gluing about 20 sheets of paper together into a
essentially a notepad.
I have no idea if the customer contacted HP about this. I suggested that perhaps they
should, since, it was HP brand paper, and an HP brand printer, which required a service
call due to the glued-together paper getting stuck. But I was sure to explain how to fan
BOTH ends of the new ream before putting it in the drawer!
-Ian
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