Xerox ColorQube 9303 Series, Service Manual, Page: 1723 / 1812

February 2013
8-29 ColorQube® 9303 Family
Principles of Operation
Roll Motion
Figure 8
Figure 8 Roll motor motion
Printhead Maintenance
To clear jets that have been identified by the IOD system as being partially or completely
blocked by waste ink or paper debris, the printheads are purged by forcing air at a pressure of
4psi through the jets. The function of the printhead maintenance assembly is to wipe the print-
heads after the purge to remove waste ink and debris. The wiper moves within a wiper track
that guides the vertical motion of the wiper parallel to the printhead face during the jetstack
wipe. The wiper carriage wipes two heads at a time, either both upper heads or both lower
heads. The lower part of the printhead face is shaped so that any excess ink will be directed
into the waste tray below,
Figure 6 .
Registration / Preheat Assembly
Cleaning Cycle
Duplex printing leaves ink residues on the preheater plates in the registration / preheater
assembly. A preheater cleaning cycle removes ink residues from the preheater plates.
Preheater cleaning involves three steps:
1. Heat the preheater plates. The air pump is turned off and preheater plate's temperature is
raised to 85 degrees Centigrade.
2. Clean the preheater plates. Sheets are run through the assembly in simplex mode. Media
is alternately shifted off center to maximize the cleaning area.
3. Cool the pre heater plates. The air pump is turned on and sheets are run though the
assembly in duplex mode until the set point of 65
°
C is reached.
Cleaning Cycle Error Handling
Error handling for a preheater cleaning cycle requires cooling down the preheater to 65
degrees Centigrade, and then handling the error before returning the system to the standby
state.
Possible errors that can occur during preheater cleaning cycle are:
• Resource not available - media tray empty.
• Paper jams - Any occurrence that prevents the machine from printing a blank sheet and
passing it through the paper path.
During any jam, if the MediaSeq catches it, then it will raise the fault to EngMgr for action. Eng-
Mgr will first cool down the preheater to CoolTemp, scrub the pre heater cleaning service,
recover from the jam and clear the DevFault flags (both preheater clean flag and jam flag). Pre
heater clean command's status is reported as failure to SC while scrubbing the service. In this
case, the system enters into recovery mode for first cooling down the pre heater to CoolTemp
degree C and then to recover from the paper not available, jam faults. After recovering the sys-
tem goes into the standby state.
When the printer is not in a printable state for printing blank sheets (which clean and cool the
preheater), the preheater clean service handles the cooling of preheater by simply waiting until
the temperature drops. Then the service reports the failure status to SC. In this case the cool-
ing down is handled by preheater clean service, so the system goes into standby state directly
if any other subsystems hasn't raised any faults to EngMgr.
Dust Abatement
The purpose of the abatement system, Figure 9 , is to minimize the contamination found in the
vicinity of the printheads. This debris can cause print quality problems and printhead failures by
partially or completely blocking the ink jets. Reducing the amount of contamination in this area
improves printhead reliability. The abatement system is active during printing (off in Standby or
Sleep modes).
A small vacuum plenum is mounted in close proximity to the drum. The output port of the ple-
num is connected to duct and a blower creates the required vacuum. The vacuum created
removes particles and fibers from the surface of the drum and airborne contamination that
might make its way to the face of the printhead.
Additionally, the abatement system provides a small cooling effect on the drum when it is
actively pulling air. This cooling is slightly beneficial during drum over-temperature conditions.
Power for the blower is supplied from the Media Path Driver Board. The blower fan operates at
12VDC. Air is exhausted out the back of the chassis.