Copying Grows up...

In 1977 Minolta came out with their unique Electrographic 101 Copier that used both coated paper and drum technology. It had a moving top for up to 11 x 17 originals, liquid toner, and image quality that surpassed anything else on the market – at least it did when every quality factor was optimized. Pat Marasco at Paul B. Williams in Andover, took on the Minolta line when the 101’s came out and offered to sell them to me. I sold the first one he sold and he gave his top sales rep, George Foulis a hard time for not finding out where I was selling that machine and many others Copilabs placed.

 One of the “EG-101’s” problem areas was toner, being overtoned by electrostatic standards, with constant stirring by a pair of fan-like propellers pumping upwards from the bottom of the tank. Three or four pairs of steel rollers transported the paper through the toner bath, which had a grounding effect that helped pull toner onto the paper. The toner was hard to keep in suspension, though, and we could obtain dramatic quality improvement by simply draining the tank, shaking the mix and pouring it back.

 The 101’s paper was a lot better than electrostatic paper in weight, feel and appearance: “bond-like.”  The process charged and exposed a drum and transferred the charge-image to the paper which would be developed, squeegeed and dried by a heated roller with soft, fuzzy belts holding the copy against it: a unique piece of engineering.  The fuser belts could affect the image, and Minolta tried several materials, plus there was a transfer problem at the drum that produced a crescent “shadow” at the trailing edge of the copy.  Minolta had no fix for it, causing service headaches.  I studied this phenomenon at some length and decided the trailing edge of the paper was in contact with the drum for slightly too long.  Once the paper left the rollers before the transfer area, it was pushed into drum contact just a little bit more than when under tension.

 Finally I sacrificed a drum to solve it.  I took thin balsa wood, soaked it in water and then Elmer’s Glue and molded it to the drum, holding it in place with elastic bands until it dried. Then I’d cover it with Teflon tape and mount it immediately before the drum. It formed an insulated, conforming guide that prevented the paper from touching the drum before it was supposed to. Voila’! No more shadow area. After a few tests to get the size just right I diagrammed it and sent it to Minolta. They, Japanese engineers all, thanked me but stated they had another solution.  I thought they needed a kit a tech could install in the field. Minolta ultimately came up with a modified transport mechanism that may or may not have been the answer, but I kept making my own guides. New machines, though, had an added mylar strip that basically kept the paper away from the drum that same little bit.

 Minolta came out with the “301” which used dry toner but needed distilled water in a tray/wick arrangement to help maintain a certain conductivity. Trouble was almost no one used distilled water and regular water got pretty gamey. We were constantly cleaning out those trays.

 After Xerox, our biggest competition in the ‘70’s was the Savin plain paper copier. Starting with the “750” and soon joined by the 11 x 17 “760” and the 770 that had a good document feeder, liquid-toner plain paper machines seemed to be taking over. The first “750” came over from Ricoh around 1972.   It’s suggested price was about $2,000.00. The Savin marketing people saw the potential better than the Japanese did, and recommended they bring it back with two paper trays, only at $5,000.00.

 Sharp and Toshiba had some slow, “toaster-oven” machines: plain paper with dry toner and radiant fusing. Royal had floor-model plain-paper machines, first with zinc-oxide masters for drums and then with metallic drums, but none were as reliable as the Savin PPC’s.  3M picked up the Toshiba BD702 and sold it in a brown and tan color scheme. Earlier they had turned big Toshiba liquid-toner machines into dry toner, coated-paper machines that worked fairly well but took forever to warm up – or cool down, if you were trying to clear a jam. The first Toshiba PPC I worked on was one of those BD-702’s which I coin-operated for Neil Saviano of Essex Office Machines down in Salem, Mass. He had won a bid for the new Methuen High School but had no idea how to coin-op a BD-702.

 Sharp sold its machines to other brands, including Olivetti, and we sold a few. Dealers loved the Sharps because the PM kits were frequent and expensive. You could have a fire in them, though, if paper jammed in the “toaster” area. They were heavy.  Canon got into plain paper with liquid toner on a machine called the “L-7” and then the NP-70 model, even before Savin.  The L-7 had a slip-through document handler that worked in one position, but book copying still required the top to move. Savin had a stationary top. The Canons could make a better copy than the Savins, but with more frequent maintenance.

 Where Savin had a spring-steel guide with teflon backing to force the paper off the drum, Canon had a serpentine nylon belt that most users never figured out. Bad jams would dislodge the belt and it took a tech to put it back. Savins tended to make very distinct black marks at the lead edge of the void area, Canons a less visible one, until the belts got dirty. There were felt wipers to keep them clean, but they became crusty and made marks. Canons needed smooth, less permeable paper; Savins just needed “duplicator” grade.

 But, except for the L-7, Canon had no original feeders and Savin would win, head to head.  Canon had, however, a licensed imitator, Saxon Corporation in Florida.  Saxon made a version of the Canon L-7 and sold a ton of them. They were more fallible than Canons, but they had more dealers and they were cheaper. One of their best dealers was Worcester Business Machines, half owned by Brent Campbell, one of the great sales people I’ve known. Brent, who looked like John Denver, had been sent to manage the Apeco office in Hartford by Jim Fitzpatrick, and was only too pleased to relinquish that lofty position and come back to his territory in Boston. He made more money that way, and then he partnered with Jack Quinn in Worcester.  They sold liquid-toned Saxon PPC’s from a converted mobile home set up for demonstrations. Brent retired nicely some years ago. Who wouldn’t buy a copier from John Denver?