3800 CMF Problem, need help

From: Jim Stocker Sent: 6/10/2002 6:08 AM
The official answer that we’ve received from Ricoh, is that only the black DVU is used for B&W, and when it receives a color page, all 4 DVU’s are engaged, but they don’t disengage due a potential speed issue. My thought is if you can make it engage for color pages, make them disengage if the client wants it to.

Anyway, in your specific situation, why not have them reverse the page order, so the B&W prints first?

Cheers.

Jim Stocker

From: Jay Sent: 6/10/2002 8:36 AM

There is no fix. As you found out the 3800CMF does not have Auto Color Selection like the 6513 and others.

Also, we have been setting our defaults to B &W so that the user has to consciously select Color.

From: LisaPeace Sent: 6/10/2002 2:49 PM

Thanks for the response...yes, we've been talking about the speed issue as well.

The reason that wouldn't work for this customer is that the application has multiple pages...usually a hundred or so (all double sided, one side color, one side b&w).

How are you configuring your maintenance options?

Thanks!
Lisa

From: Lee Sent: 6/10/2002 8:20 PM

I don't know if this will help, and unfortunately, I don't have one in the demo room to test this theory, but here goes:
Service Program 7-003 displays the various meters for the machine. 7-003-1 is the Total Prints, 7-003-7 is B&W Prints, and 7-003-8 is Full color prints. There is another one there called 7-003-14 B&W Contact. If I understand the book correctly, this counter increments when B&W prints are made after the machine has automatically switched to color mode. Just MAYBE
7-003-8 minus 7-003-14 equals the true number of Color prints made
7-003-7 plus 7-003-14 equals the true number of black and white prints made

Hey, it's just a theory...perhaps someone at Ricoh could either confirm or deny that this is the way it works.

Thanks!
Lee

From: ricohaficio Sent: 6/11/2002 5:15 AM

We offer two agrrements for the color printers and CMF.

1. One Labor only with unlimited clicks.

2. We follow the RMAP guide for service and pricing.

Art

From: Lee Sent: 6/11/2002 9:40 PM
Still puzzling over this problem and wish I had one in the demo room to test. Here is something else I found. In the Product Support Guide, the explanation of the meter is as follows. With SP5-930-1 set to ON, B&W pages after a color page have been printed are counted as B&W. This document goes even further with an example of Page 1=B&W, Page 2=Color, Page3=B&W, Page 4=B&W, Page 5=Color. With Meter charge Mode ON, the counts for the above job would be represented as follows
SP7-003-007 Prints B&W=3
SP7-003-008 Prints Color=2

With Meter charge Mode OFF, all prints after the 2nd page are counted as Color
Using the same example:
SP7-003-007 Prints B&W=1
SP7-003-008 Prints Color=4

It is also noted that the usage of the various PCU's is not calculated accurately in Meter Charge Mode ON. The yields of the various units are calculated not by the number of prints but by the number of rotations. The expected yield of a color PCU is estimated at 50K Prints OR 295907 rotations, whichever comes first.
Confused yet? Me too! To me, all of this would make it difficult to sell this device on a meter charge basis, since the number of rotations per page depends on the pages printed per job.
For example, the color PCU is expected to yield 50K prints at 5 pages per job. That yield drops to 39.5K if you run only 3 pages per job, but rises to 60K if you run 10 pages per job. I can't really figure out any way to bill it accurately (or fairly) to the customer either way. It looks to me like the logical solution is to sell service at a flat rate, which will cover a hardware failure only. And hope you don't miss out on the supply revenue since you don't really have them locked in to you for the supplies.

Thanks!
Lee