How do you maintain a copy machine?

No matter if you are leasing, renting or purchasing your photocopier or printer, it is vital to have it under a maintenance plan with a professional service provider like Axia. Multifunction devices have a lot of internal moving parts and just like a car need regular servicing to ensure breakdowns are limited and rare. Maintenance plans include providing the toner and ink, waste toners, parts and maintenance calls which are necessary to ensure the high quality prints over the minimum life of the equipment.

The importance of Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance for your photocopiers and printers works similarly to car servicing: if you take your car in to get a squeaky brake fixed, the mechanic is only going to look at and fix your brakes, and you may be back a month later for them to fix something else. However, if you take your car in for regular services, i.e 100,000km service, the mechanic is going to look over everything and preventatively maintain your vehicle to prevent your car needing another service sooner.

This process is no different for a multifunction copier, but is often overlooked by most businesses. Copiers have a print engine and a lot of moving parts which deteriorate over the life of the machine as those parts do more work through printing, copying, scanning and faxing.

Each part has a manufacturer page yield of when it needs to be cleaned, adjusted or replaced. An example of this is shown in the below table, although the entire list goes on for about 10 pages!

Corrective vs Preventative Maintenance Approach

As discussed above, under Axia’s preventative service approach our service technicians complete all checks and replace all parts in accordance with the manufacturer’s service manual, thereby addressing problems before they occur. However, this is not the same approach held by the majority of suppliers and manufacturers in the industry.

Typically, most suppliers only have a corrective approach. This means that a customer will only ever see a technician when they call and ask for service because their copier or printer is not operating . When the technician attends the service call he is under pressure to get that device working again as quickly as possible to keep the customer happy. The technician will rarely do any other checks, like the analogy of a mechanic fixing a squeaky brake outlined above, the customer is more than likely to require another service call earlier than would have been necessary had preventative action been taken causing more down time and inconvenience.

The graph below shows a visual of how this works over time.

The copier drops in quality or has a major failure which warrants the client to log a service call with their supplier. The technician comes and fixes that part to solve the problem, however as no preventative maintenance is done other parts are still worn meaning the machine is not back to 'as new'.

With a preventative maintenance schedule, the machines are serviced at intervals before the drop in quality. This leads to rare breakdowns, if any, and keeps machines running ‘as new’ over their effective life.

A secondary benefit of this, in Axia’s case, is that preventative service alerts are not urgent. This means that any urgent breakdowns can be prioritised ahead. This leads to incredibly fast service completion times.

Tips for maintaining your copier day to day

Using genuine parts and consumables – Your managed print service provider should be providing you with all of the parts and consumables required for your machine. If they are servicing the machine properly these will be genuine manufacturer branded products. After market and “whitebox” products are cheaper and of lesser quality leading to increased wear and tear on your machine.

Using the right paper – paper type, weights and capacities play an important role in your photocopier. Make sure you know the right capacity of your paper drawers which will differ depending on the thickness of the stock you are using. If a tray is overfilled, or the stock is too thick you can expect to get jams. Jams also occur when paper has been stored in the copier unused for a long time or in a humid environment. This causes the top sheets of paper to curl that will cause a jam when used. If this happens you can either reorder the paper (put the top half on the bottom) or replace with new paper.

Keeping the machine clean – make sure to keep the feeder output trays and copier glass clean and free from any toner. When cleaning any trays always wipe away from the openings to the device. When clearing jams make sure to remove all of the pieces of paper that cause the jam, even if they’re tiny. If the jam persists make sure to call your provider so that a professional service technician can fix the issue.

10 Questions to Help You Find the Right Managed Print Partner

It’s not hard to believe that every Managed Print Services provider claims they can deliver exactly what you need.

Ask the following questions to select the provider best equipped to back up their commitment:

• Can the provider submit written testimonials from long term managed print clients?
• Do the service providers offer a choice of photocopier and laser printer brands?
• Are you confident the provider will accurately measure and report cost savings?
• Is the provider serious about helping you print less?
• Does the provider employ their own service team?
• Will the provider utilise existing cost effective print devices, regardless of manufacturer?
• Can the provider improve workflow automation and/or optimise business processes?
• Is the provider happy to supply details of all service calls, including time call logged, allocated to technician and completed, time taken to complete call, fault and rectification undertaken by service engineer?
• Does the provider offer direct access to Senior Management?
• Are you confident the service provider will constantly monitor your print platform?

Axia Office — Managed print service in Sydney, Australia

Are you ready to say goodbye to printing headaches? Axia Office offers affordable solutions to businesses in the Sydney metropolitan area, providing high-quality printers from the top names in the industry, and quick, reliable service when you need it. Contact us to learn more about what we can do for you and your business.