By automotive standards “preventive maintenance” oil changes, filter changes, checking fluids and cleaning inside and out of vehicles, is the best thing to do on your vehicle to prolong the life of your vehicle and prevent unnecessary breakdowns.
Like “preventive maintenance” on vehicles same holds true for office printers and copiers. Well we don’t change the oil and check fluids but all printers and copiers have “preventive maintenance” cycles just like automotive standards.
“Changing the oil,” in printer copier terms, is making sure gears are lubricated and feed rollers are clean and in good condition.
“Checking the fluids,” well unless this is a postage printer there is no fluid to change, but the comparison to printers and copiers is checking the entire paper path to see if there are any worn parts or toner dust inside the machine.
“Cleaning inside and out,” well folks you think this would be a given, but in reality, people are neglecting these duties. We are surprised to see that machines have dust and dirt inside and out, when removing and replacing machines out of offices. This does not help to prolong the life of the equipment.
Tips: We recommend to customers to wipe the outside of machines with a damp rag or with glass cleaner. Never spray the machine directly!
• Open up the toner cartridge area and wipe any excess toner off with a dry rag, avoid using canned air since this could blow toner dust onto sensors or optics inside of the machine, which could cause other issues.
• Some other things to consider, is cleaning or rejuvenating feed rollers. Feed rollers are used in printers and copiers to guide output paper thru the machine, and they are also located in automatic document feeders.
Tips:
• Use distilled water and lint free cloth to clean the rollers – dampen cloth slightly.
• Use a rubber rejuvenator to re-coat feed rollers – simply dampen a q-tip and rub entire surface of the rollers
These easy to do preventive maintenance steps and tips will help save you money and prevent breakdowns in the future, if these steps are too much to handle consider using a local printer copier specialist, they typically offer low cost preventive maintenance plans that would handle these and other repair needs.