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I'm a full-fledged RegiCon!
February 4, 2008

In my battle with the laser unit on the Tektronix/Xerox printer I became a seasoned technician. After several hours on the task, I realized that the people who service these machines get training. I was not trained. So, I floundered around reading a service manual that referred to esoteric settings and adjustments of parts I knew not.

My time is worth something, of course, and I often wonder (when I am up to my elbows in parts) if it wouldn't have been smarter to hire the technician to come fix the darn thing.

Back in 1981, when I bought a cathode-ray-tube typesetter from Linotype (a 202W), I insisted as part of the sales contract that I would be allowed to attend – at no additional charge – the training their service people attend. As a result, I spent a couple of weeks in Wellsboro, PA, learning about the circuits inside that exotic machine, and how to perform the service that was occasionally necessary.

My justification for this was that it was nearly impossible for Linotype to get a service technician to San Luis Obispo on short (or any) notice. My ulterior motive was that I am a cheapskate who likes to fix things himself. But, the other side of it was simply practical; I couldn’t wait even one day to have a service technician get here. The training paid-off, too. Several times, when the machine stopped making money and started making funny noises, I got out the oscilloscope and spent the afternoon looking at waveforms. It was fun, and I was always able to repair the machine. Not once did a service technician set foot in my shop to repair that machine.

As a result of this do-it-myself approach to service, I have always gotten inside the machines I have owned. The Tektronix printer was just the latest of these gadgets inside of which I have inserted my volt meter. Is it a good idea for us to repair our own equipment? In rural areas I’d say emphatically yes. In the big city, where Tektronix service technicians are sitting in Starbucks waiting to be dispatched to their next assignment, perhaps it’s better to let them do it.

If my time is worth $50 per hour, and I spent about ten hours on the recent repair and follow-up calibration, then it cost me $500 of time I could have charged to someone else, plus the $1,200 part. An expensive repair from any angle. I doubt that Tektronix would have charged much more (or less).

The other benefit is that the Tektronix service technician would have been trained in advance in the location of the laser unit, and in the esoteric process of calibrating it after installation (“Turn the Y gear 112 clicks CCW and then run Skew Routine #2...”). It might have been cheaper.

But now I am a skillful Tektronix technician, and I know how to do it in case I am ever called to duty in a national emergency or disaster. I know the calibration routine inside out and backward (it’s called RegiCon) and I can do it for anyone who needs my skills. Of course there are only two other printers of this type in a 300 mile radius of me, so demand might be low.

I suppose I should not give up my professorship at the University to make service calls on laser printers, but I did learn a lot!

Posted by Brian Lawler on February 4, 2008 | Comments (0)