I picked up a new Ricoh fi-8170 and I’m running into a pretty frustrating issue.

I’ve cleaned it multiple ways — soft makeup brush, alcohol wipes, microfiber cloth, and even followed Ricoh’s official cleaning steps. No matter what I do, I’m getting vertical streaks on a ton of scans.

It’s not even consistent in the same spot every time, which makes me think it’s not a scratch on the glass or anything like that. But it’s happening way too often — probably around 70% of my scans.

I’ve tried cleaning it every ~100 cards, and even right after a fresh clean I’m still getting streaks on more than half the scans.

At this point I’m not sure if I’m missing something or if I just got a bad unit. Anyone run into this and figure out a fix?

The pictures I included are the ones that I just let slide because I cant seem to get clear scans. 

I’ve had many issues with the 8170 and this was an issue I used to have really badly. I used to use alcohol wipes, but stopped a while back because I noticed the streaks went away when I wasn’t using them. 

My only guess is the rollers weren’t fully drying? I kept trying to clean it and it would just get worse. 

Now I use a microfiber cloth to wipe down the glass then I’ve actually been using a dryer sheet on the rollers and it has been pretty good at removing dust. It’s still not always perfect, but not nearly as bad as it was before

I originally purchased the scanner to speed up my process, but it has slowed it down a lot due to this. I am having to rescan over half of a stack and even half the rescans need to be rescanned. I ended up just returning the scanner as the unit I received does not justify the purchase price.