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The best way to be proactive with your printers (and plotters) is to pay attention to when you need maintenance kits or parts. You should periodically, say once a month, run a configuration and a supply status page on your printer. When you reach 20% of life left on one of the parts, it would be best to order one to have when you need it. This will enable the least amount of downtime and problems for your printer.
The maintenance kit parts or periodical parts are all considered to be consumable parts by printer manufacturers. Their lifetimes are not carved in stone. Most problems with such parts will usually occur when they have less than 20% of life left. Having this consumable kit or parts on-site will result in far less downtime because when you log a call on your printer and the field service technician arrives, you will have the part on-site and the printer can be repaired at that time! This is far better than having to place a call and being reactive and waiting for a consumable kit or part to come in and having a call that takes two visits on two different days. Please keep track of the lifetimes of your printers' parts and Contact Us for preventative maintenance.
Joe Churma - Hardware Technician
Give Us a Call 617-731-6319 and Ask a Professional IT Support Technician Any Questions You May Have!
Recently, I was at a customer's site working on a multi-function color laser printer. Its image drum unit life had dropped to zero percent, which stops the printer from running. The printer was the only one in the customer's department and it was critical to have a printer up and running. As a temporary fix, I reset the printer and tricked it into believing a new drum unit was installed. The printer is up and running with no guarantee on print quality. The customer is very happy and we are waiting for the new drum unit order to come in. This goes against the printer manufacture's specifications. As far as they are concerned, it should never be done, but it will not hurt the printer and it helped the customer out at a critical time.
Another customer had a plotter that went down because its carriage drive belt went south and started to fall apart. A fiber string from the carriage drive belt had wrapped around the carriage belt drive pulley. Normally, I would leave the plotter as is, order a carriage drive belt, and wait for it to come in. The customer asked if there was anything I could do to get the plotter up and running in the meantime. I was able to work the carriage belt fiber string off from the carriage belt drive pulley and cleaned it. I also doctored the carriage drive belt and removed all hanging fiber strings. This temporary fix is against the manufacture's specifications on how to handle this call, but it will not hurt the plotter and has helped the customer in a bind.
IT Support, Products & Services Blog for Greater Boston & Cambridge