Xerox Corporation

Stuart John Handley

Paul Simon Golding

Pieter Mulder

Derek J Milton

Christopher J Moloney

Julian Derek Morrison

Tim Spink

A toner dam maintenance process and system model the amount of toner mass at a toner cleaner blade, and apply a corrective procedure, such as insertion of a paperless copy into the print job mid-job or immediately prior to cycle out, to replenish the toner mass at the cleaner blade to maintain lubrication and reduce cleaning failure. The modeling includes contributing factors toward toner dam input and output, including untransferred toner, cycle-in/cycle-out bands, untransferred background, and leakage of toner from the cleaner blade. One or several threshold can be reached to cause one or more different corrective actions to take place. The action may be adding or skipping a pitch to insert a corrective maintenance pattern without transfer.

Blade maintenance process and system for maintaining adequate toner dam

In accordance with certain aspects, an adaptive system and method are implemented to estimate the level of a consumable such as toner on a gauge that accommodates machine-to-machine variances, individual machine degradation over time, and otherwise correct over time for various inaccuracies by applying an error compensation that can be used in subsequent replenisher computations. Over the lifetime of an imaging machine, such as a copier or printer device, these error compensations can increase the accuracy of the particular machine, to accommodate various deviations from nominal constraint assumptions as a result of differences in one or more operating constraints.

Adaptive toner gas gauge

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Welwyn Garden, United Kingdom

Stuart John Handley