Printer service in Fortitude Valley and Newstead: the kind of building it is
Not many parts of Brisbane have so many different kinds of building in one square kilometre. There are Queenslanders along the quieter streets turned into architects' and accountants' offices, brick warehouses and old woolstores in Teneriffe and Newstead fitted out with polished concrete, newer towers along the Valley's edge, and the long shopfronts of Brunswick Street and Ann Street with one office upstairs above a cafe.
A copier does not care which one it is in, but we do. A machine on the second floor of a woolstore may have come up a freight lift and need to go back down it. A printer in a converted Queenslander lives on a timber floor that shifts when someone walks past, and a flatbed scanner or a plotter hates that. We ask which kind of building before we ask which model.
Creative studios and what they ask of a machine
Design studios, architects, agencies and photographers are fussier than a typical office, and they are right to be. A colour that drifts from one print to the next is a real problem when the client is holding a proof in one hand and the page in the other.
Most colour drift comes from the same handful of places. Developer that is tired, a transfer belt carrying a film of toner, a drum with a mark, or a machine that has simply not been calibrated since it was moved. We run the machine's own calibration and registration routines, look at the parts that matter and tell you which it was. Where the cause is the file or the colour profile on the computer, we say that too, and we leave that part to your designer.
Banding across a page, a faint repeating mark every so many centimetres and a dull cyan are the three we see most. Each points somewhere different, and a technician can read them from a print in about a minute.
Pocket by pocket
| Who works there | What we have learned | |
|---|---|---|
| Fortitude Valley | Agencies, music and venue businesses, small firms above shops, a few legal and finance offices | Parking is hard, so we park once and carry what we need. Some upper floors are stairs only. |
| Newstead | Architects, engineers, consultants, newer commercial floors, apartment ground floors with offices | Plenty of lifts, many with a booking system. Ask the building manager early. |
| Teneriffe | Studios and design firms in converted woolstores | High ceilings, concrete, long walks from the dock to the suite. |
| New Farm | Practices, boutique firms, a lot of work done from large houses and cottages | Residential street parking and visitors who expect a quiet visit. |
| Bowen Hills | Contractors, government and health related offices, businesses around the showgrounds | Heavy traffic on show days, and more security at some sites. |
Heavy card, gloss and the bypass tray
Menus, invitations, presentation covers and event cards are big business around here, and the commonest cause of a jam in a creative office is not the machine at all. It is the wrong paper setting.
A multifunction decides how hot to run the fuser and how fast to feed from the paper type chosen at the tray. Load 250 gsm card into the bypass tray and leave the type on plain, and the toner does not bond, the sheet slides and the next sheet piles into it. Set the type to heavy or coated and the machine slows the sheet and raises the heat.
Gloss and coated stock add a second trap. Some coated paper is made for inkjet and melts or sticks in a laser fuser. Check the packet says laser or digital press compatible before you buy a case of it.
If a machine has been fed card all week and starts to leave a faint shadow of the print on the next page, ring us. That is often a fuser or a roller that has been worked hard.
Venues, restaurants and the late shift
The Valley is a hospitality district, and a good number of venue and restaurant groups run their paperwork from an office above the premises. Rosters, supplier invoices, liquor licensing records, event run sheets. The printing happens when the office is open, which is often late in the afternoon and into the evening.
We do not mind working around that. A machine that stops at four on a Thursday before a big weekend is a problem we want to hear about early, and we say honestly what can be arranged. Lines busy when you ring? The call is logged and returned.
Moving a machine up and down a woolstore
Offices change floors in this precinct more than most. A studio outgrows its suite, an agency takes the space next door, a lease ends and the whole place goes round the corner. A copier moved the wrong way is a copier that arrives with a cracked cover or a drum that has been shaken.
We move machines and set them up again at the new location. That means the drum and toner are secured, the paper is out of the trays, the machine stays upright on the move and the network settings are reconnected and tested before we leave. It also means someone has asked the building about the lift in advance.
Riverside sites and flood memory
The low riverside edges of Newstead, Teneriffe and New Farm were among the places the Brisbane River reached in January 2011, and flooding again came to parts of the city in 2022. A lot of businesses down here keep copiers, servers and stock off the ground floor and out of basements now. If you are fitting out a new riverside suite, ask where the machine sits relative to the lowest floor, and we are happy to talk through placing it.
If a machine has been through water, do not switch it on. Leave it, and ring.
Bowen Hills, the showgrounds and a week in August
Bowen Hills sits beside the showgrounds, and when the Ekka is on in August the roads around it change character. Buses, closures, people on foot and a different kind of parking problem. If your office is near the showgrounds, tell us on the call and we plan the visit around it, often by coming early.
The suburb itself is mostly contractors, consultants and health related offices that sit near the hospital precinct at Herston, together with newer commercial floors. Many run a single colour multifunction shared by the whole floor, which means that when it stops, everyone notices.
Questions we ask a creative office
- Is the fault on every page or only on colour, only on heavy stock, only from one computer
- When was the machine last calibrated, and did it move recently
- What do you print most: proofs, decks, labels, large format
- Do clients see the machine, or is it in a back room
- Who looks after the network, and should we speak to them
Machines you see in the Valley
Colour multifunctions lead here, Konica Minolta bizhub and Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE in the creative offices, Toshiba e-STUDIO and Kyocera TASKalfa in the accounting and legal rooms, and the odd Ricoh on a long lease. Architects and engineers add HP DesignJet and Canon imagePROGRAF plotters, and we service those on site too. We are an independent service business and we repair what is in the room, whoever's badge is on it.
A word about plotters, since a lot of the Newstead studios rely on them. A wide format printer that bands or streaks is rarely a mystery. A clogged or worn head on an inkjet model, a dirty encoder strip that confuses the carriage, or a roll that is not feeding square will each give a different look to the print. Tell us what the print looks like and which roll size you run and we arrive ready for it. Where a plotter has a serial fault the manufacturer needs to deal with, we say so on the phone and do not pretend otherwise.
Smaller machines in the Valley, the A4 colour laser at a reception desk or the mono printer in a back office, are serviced as well. We just do not go looking for that work. The office with a floor of staff and a contract machine is where we do our best work.
Ask the people who print
The operator knows first
So our technicians ask before they open anything. What did it do, when, how often, who was using it. Then they go and look.
Tell us the first thing you noticed, even if it sounds small. Often it is nearly the whole answer.
- Asked first. The users are the first source.
- Written down. What you said goes on the job record.
- Checked against the machine. Then the covers come off.
Keep reading around Brisbane
Brisbane CBDQueen Street to Eagle Street, William Street to Roma Street
Milton and inner BrisbanePark Road, Rosalie, Toowong and the inner ring
Plotter serviceHP DesignJet, Canon imagePROGRAF and Epson SureColor plotters, repaired at your premises.
Konica Minolta repairsbizhub i-Series, C series and production machines.
Canon repairsimageRUNNER ADVANCE, DX and imagePRESS, on site.
Eastern suburbs and airportHamilton, Ascot, Eagle Farm, Pinkenba, Murarrie, Bulimba and MorningsideSouth Brisbane and WoolloongabbaSouth Brisbane, West End, Woolloongabba, Kangaroo Point and Dutton Park: clinics, studios, towers and event offices.
Copier black lines and streaksLines on copies or prints and where they come from.Buy, sell and lease
Buy, sell and lease commercial copiers in Brisbane
We also sell new and refurbished commercial copiers and buy used ones. Same team, same technicians.
The kind of work that comes in
Questions people ask us on the phone
Do you do printer service in Fortitude Valley on the same day?
Same day service is available. Ring early, say what the machine is doing and give the building so we can plan parking and access.
Our prints have a colour cast that comes and goes. Is that a repair?
Sometimes. Tired developer, a dirty transfer belt or a machine that needs calibrating can all cause it. We calibrate, check the parts and tell you if the cause is in the file instead.
Can you repair a plotter in a Newstead architect's office?
Yes. Tell us the model and what it is doing, whether that is banding, a head or feed problem, or a paper roll that skews.
Will you work out of hours in a Valley venue office?
We say honestly what can be arranged. Ring with the problem and the times that suit and we will tell you.
The bypass tray keeps jamming with card. What is wrong?
Often nothing is broken. Check the paper type is set to heavy or coated for that tray, and that the card is within the weight the machine lists. If it still jams, the rollers may be worn.
Do you need a building induction or a booking for the lift?
Some buildings ask for one, so tell us when you ring. We then arrive with the right details and do not hold anyone up in the lobby.
Can you move our copier to another suite in Teneriffe?
Yes. We secure it, move it, reconnect it and test printing and scanning before leaving.
Our scanner leaves vertical lines on the glass copies but not from the feeder. Why?
A mark on the glass or on the strip beside it is the usual cause. Clean the glass gently with a soft lint free cloth and a little glass cleaner on the cloth, never sprayed on the machine. If lines remain, a technician should look at it.
Do you wipe the drive on a machine that is being replaced?
Yes. Scans and print jobs can be stored on an internal drive, and we clear it before the machine goes.
