Did you take a road trip this summer? If you did, I bet you took your car in for a service before you took off. It’s common sense to prioritize maintenance to avoid problems down the road. This common-sense thinking can easily carry over to one of the hardest working machines in your dealership: your scanner. Strict adherence to scanner maintenance ensures optimal scanner speed and accuracy, and increases the longevity of this expensive piece of equipment. 

Whether you have a professional Scanning Operator (which I highly recommend) or members of your team take turns scanning, it’s crucial to have a maintenance schedule prominently posted and to hold your team accountable for cleaning tasks. You can also set-up a cleaning schedule in Excel and set recurring calendar reminders so tasks don’t slip through the cracks. Here’s what needs to be done on a daily, weekly, and semi-annual basis:

1. Daily Tasks

Paper dust is the enemy of your sharpest, best scans, and it accumulates daily. Wiping the lenses, pads, rollers, and feed mechanism will only take a couple of minutes. Use a microfiber cloth and manufacturer-approved cleaner. Spray cleaner onto the cloth, not directly on the scanner, and let the glass dry fully before using.

2. Weekly Tasks

The paper chute and interior rollers and sensors should be cleaned on a weekly basis to avoid error messages, ink residue on scans, and misaligned documents. To clean the paper chute:

1. Turn on the scanner, press the menu button then use up and down arrows to select Cleaning, then press Enter to confirm.
2. Spray cleaner on the cleaning paper.
3. Load the cleaning paper in the chute and press Enter. Feed the paper through the chute a few times or until excessive residue appears on the paper.

To clean the rollers:

1. Open scanner lid and locate the Brake, Pick, and Idler Rollers
2. Carefully, remove the brake roller from the scanner (Pick and idler rollers should be left in the scanner and manually rotated when cleaning).
3. Use a cleaning wipe to clean off any dirt or dust along the grooves of the roller. Be gentle to avoid damaging the roller grooves. Be sure to remove all visible residue as feeding performance can be affected by any black residue left on the rollers

3. Semi-Annual Tasks

Brake and pick rollers generally need to be replaced every year, or every 200,000 sheets scanned. If you notice one of these issues, it’s time to order replacements:

1. Scanner displays “It is about time to replace the consumable,” error message.
2. Scanner has trouble grabbing paper.
3. Scanner regularly pulls multiple pages at once.

Keep in mind your team should only be using the proper scanning kit for cleaning. Check your scanner model to be sure you’re ordering the correct kit. Each kit includes cleaner, cleaning paper, and cleaning wipes. Using anything else may cause problems instead of solving them.

You rely on your scanner to produce detailed images of dealership documents. Routine maintenance is part of keeping it running at optimal performance. Easily avoid common issues by taking care of it on a regular basis.