Printer Service Murwillumbah and the Tweed Valley

Out on the farm and in the packing shed

Behind the town the valley is working country. Sugar cane that goes to the mill at Condong, banana plantations on the slopes, macadamias, beef and dairy, and the suppliers and contractors who keep all of it moving. Farm offices are often a room off the machinery shed, or a desk in the farmhouse hall.

Packing sheds print labels and dockets by the hundred, on a thermal printer or a workgroup laser, with a fixed deadline: the truck leaves at a set hour whether the printer is ready or not. A label printer that skips, a docket printer that jams on carbonless paper, a ribbon that wrinkles, each of them is the same call on a different machine.

Dust and humidity are the usual suspects, and dust in a banana shed has a sweetness that attracts insects. We have opened a printer on the valley floor and found more than paper in the path.

Power at the end of a long line

Rural power in the valley is often at the far end of a long run of line. Supply sags when a pump or a cooling unit starts, and spikes when a storm passes. Printers and copiers have switch mode supplies that tolerate a lot, up to a point, and then fail without notice.

If a machine has died twice in a year with no pattern, ask what else is on the circuit. A surge protector is a better fix than a new power board, and we say that when it is true. Where it is not, we repair the board and tell you what to protect it with.

The valley road, village by village

The map decides the day more than the weather does. This is roughly how we look at it.

Studios, galleries and makers

The valley has an arts reputation, and the Tweed Regional Gallery and the Margaret Olley Art Centre sit in Murwillumbah. Around them are studios, framers, printmakers, designers and small publishers. Their machines are often a good colour multifunction or a wide format printer, and their standards are high.

When a print of a painting comes out with a green shadow, the artist does not need to be told it is a profile issue. They want it fixed. We start with the same simple questions we ask of a farm shed, then add a few about the paper, the media setting and the file, because on a wide format printer half of the quality complaints come from there and not from the hardware.

Plotters and large format printers need a different technician from a copier. We say plainly when a job needs one, and we line it up.

Floods, and what comes after

The Tweed Valley has been flooded often, and recently. If a machine has been in water, do not switch it on. The power supply and boards can hold silt and moisture that make a bad situation worse, and the person at the switch is the one at risk. We can inspect a machine and give you an honest opinion. Often the answer is to replace, and we tell you when it is.

A habit that costs nothing: after a warning, lift machines off the floor and unplug them. Paper stock goes up with them. It is amazing how much of a recovery bill is a ream of paper and a copier on a low shelf.

Brands we meet in the valley

Kyocera is probably the commonest copier brand among valley offices, with Toshiba close behind in the larger practices. HP and Brother lasers carry a lot of the load on farms and in the villages, and Epson and Canon appear in the art studios and print shops. We service all of them and we are not a dealer for any, so there is no reason to steer you.

If you have an older machine that is out of production, tell us the model. Many keep working a long time, and we say when spare parts are getting scarce so that nobody is surprised.

Ringing from the valley

Mobile reception can drop out in the folds of the hills. Give us a second number if you have one and a landmark that a stranger could find. If the lines are busy the call is logged and returned, so leave the machine, the problem and the number.

Same day service is available in town and in most of the valley, and we tell you honestly when the day is full. The technician is trained, experienced and certified, and 98% of repairs are fixed on the first visit.

The first questions the technician asks

Which words are on the screen. Not the meaning, the words. Did anything happen before it stopped, a power cut, a storm, a new paper brand, a relocation. Is the problem every page or some pages. Has it done this before.

That is all it takes. Four answers and the diagnosis is usually a short list, and the parts that go in the van are chosen from it.

Mill, depot and contractor paperwork

Cane harvest runs through the cooler months, and the mill at Condong and the contractors who work for it generate a steady stream of weighbridge slips, delivery documents, invoices and compliance records. Depots and rural suppliers in and around Murwillumbah print against the clock in those weeks, and a fault in the middle of harvest has a cost that is easy to count.

If your business has a season, tell us when it is. We would much rather look at a machine in the quiet weeks than be asked to rescue it in the busiest ones. The same applies to the macadamia and banana packing calendars, which come at different times of year but with the same urgency.

Contractors who work from a ute and a laptop often print from a small inkjet or a compact laser in the back of a shed. We service the commercial end, and if someone rings about a smaller machine we still look at it, but we are honest about whether a repair beats a new one.

Reading what the screen tells you

Machines are better at explaining themselves than people give them credit for. A message about a tray, a cover or a cartridge is usually literal. A message about a fuser, a motor or a unit is a pointer to an area of the machine, not a diagnosis, and a code number without context says very little on its own.

So when you ring, read us the whole message and say what the machine was doing when it appeared. Printing, copying, warming up, waking from sleep. A fault that appears on wake up and a fault that appears after ten pages are not the same fault, even when the number is.

There are things you can safely do. Switch off at the machine, wait, switch on. Open the cover the screen names, look for torn paper, close it firmly. Check the paper is flat and not crossing the fill line. Beyond that, leave it to us, because fusers stay hot long after the power goes off and the drum does not like light.

Medical, legal and accounting rooms in town

The professional end of town is a different world from the sheds. Solicitors, accountants and medical rooms around the centre need documents that come out clean, in order, with a signature page where it is meant to be. Duplex scanning, stapled sets and confidential output are the daily jobs.

When a scan comes through at a slant, or a duplex page is upside down every second sheet, it is nearly always a feeder fault or a setting, not a disaster. We fix the feeder pad and the roller and check the settings in the same visit, so the paperwork stops arriving crooked.

An older machine that has done its time

The valley keeps machines going longer than most places, because it has to. If yours is one of those, we will tell you where it stands. Parts availability, how many repairs it has had, how much it prints. A copier with a worn drum, a worn fuser and a dying feed system is a bad repair investment. A copier with a single failed part is not.

Keep reading

Photocopier repairsAny make of office copier, repaired where it stands.→Commercial printer repairsWorkgroup lasers and fleets, repaired where they sit.→HP printer repairsLaserJet codes read like a sentence. We read them aloud.→Kyocera repairsTASKalfa copiers and ECOSYS printers, serviced on site.→Kingscliff, Tweed Heads South and PottsvilleKingscliff, Chinderah, Tweed Heads South, Banora Point, Cabarita Beach and Pottsville.→Lismore and the Northern RiversLismore, Goonellabah and the Northern Rivers hinterland: hospital, university, council, farm suppliers and small firms.→Coolangatta and Tweed HeadsBorder town offices, retirement sector administration and airport side businesses→