Best of the ISP-Lists

General

Ozone in the Office

Members of the ISP-Tech list discuss the nasty side effects of printing thousands of bills on a single laser printer at the end of each week. If your small business prints bills regularly, check out this printer discussion.

[August 7, 2001]

On the ISP-Tech list in August, CS queried,

"We have a room with three laser printers and a postage machine, all powered on 24/7. Every time we print bills, the printer jams around bill number 2500. I believe it's a heat issue, because if I turn it off for about fifteen minutes then turn it back on and start printing again, it works well for the rest of the bills.

The problem is, the thermostat controls not only that room but a couple of offices as well. And today someone moved another laser copier into that room. I'm thinking we're going to have not only a heat problem but also an electrical problem. Any thoughts?"

A number of respondents recalled dealing with similar issues:

[TH noted] "We print over 6000 bills, and I fought with our printer for about two months due to jamming. It turned out to be the rollers. When you first get them, they have an uneven surface to grip the paper, but after a couple of weeks they would be rubbed smooth. I was replacing the rollers every two weeks. We solved it by buying a huge industrial printer. It does have the added benefit of being a high quality laser copier, but it cost our company a pretty penny."

[DO offered] "We run 6000 pages every Friday for our normal closing, which includes reports, billing, etc. We've had to break this up into three installments of 2000 pages for each run, because the fuser overheats. We've even added an extra air conditioning duct that blows directly at the side panel of the printer, and that doesn't seem to help. I've thought of putting in an exhaust fan to pull the heat out, but haven't made it around to doing that yet."

[DH warned] "The temperature of the fuser is controlled by the printer, so forced cooling will just make it keep the heat on longer to compensate, and put the parts under more thermal stress."

However, it seemed that power should not be an issue:

[AM explained] "Unless you have high-ampere outlets, you're going to be running about 20 Amps per circuit. Check the draw on the printers, and as long as you're within those bounds, you should be okay. If you look near where the power cable goes into the printer, I believe it will tell you the current requirements."

[DH added] "Check the nameplates on the equipment: they should indicate current demand. You usually get 15 Amps per breaker, and your electrician can tell you how many outlets share that breaker and where they are."

Still others warned that problems with heat may indicate a fault in the printer:

[DH noted] "Laser printers put out quite a lot of heat; they have to keep their fusing rollers at a certain temperature to respond quickly to print requests. Your printer problem may be due to heat generated within the machine, and is probably a sign of impending failure. You may need to cut down the batch size and/or replace the printer. You could get a cheap thermometer and mount the sensor inside the printer to get a good idea of what's going on."

[TH agreed] "Throw a thermometer next to the printer. If it is under 85-90 degrees next to the printer, I would not suspect that heat is an issue."

And others observed that there's another issue to keep in mind as well:

[GS suggested] "Check for ventilation, too. High speed lasers can put out a lot of ozone and black effluvia. Inside the cover, there is an OSHA warning that requires so many cubic feet per hour of ventilation. When we started running our lasers, the people that tended them complained of sore throats and itchy eyes; a thin coat of toner had settled on everything within a few weeks, and the place reeked of ozone. I pointed to the OSHA warning about air flow and got a ceiling exhaust fan in there. Black dust still settled a little, but I couldn't smell ozone any more."

[DH added] "Ozone also attacks the plastics that many printer parts are made of. It's a long term thing, but it happens."

—End