How to change the paper type on a Ricoh Aficio MP 3500

People use all sorts of paper in their photocopiers, from super-thin, almost see-through paper to heavy-duty cardstock and transparency sheets.  Unfortunately, when you load a new kind of paper in the copier's paper tray or paper bank, it doesn't automatically know how thick, how rigid, or how smooth that paper is.  When you use anything other than ordinary copy paper or multipurpose paper, you should make sure to set the paper type in the copier's settings, for maximum performance and operation.

To set the paper type on a Ricoh Aficio MP 3500 or MP 4500 multifunction device, press the User Tools/Counter button on the copier's operation panel.  Then, on the touch screen, select System Settings.  A row of tabs will appear; choose the one labeled Tray Paper Settings.

The page of options that you'll see now is for changing paper sizes -- you can disregard these settings unless you have specially-sized paper in one of the trays and you've set the paper dial to the asterisk (*).  Touch the button in the lower right corner to scroll down to the next page.

Here you will see your paper type settings for your two standard paper trays and your bypass tray, as well as any additional paper trays or large capacity trays you may have installed.  Select the tray you want to change.

The screen that appears gives you all the paper types you can choose from, from plain paper (no display) to cardstock, bond, or recycled paper.  These choices will show up on the main Copy screen, so you can see what kind of paper is loaded in each tray, but they can also help the copier run better if it knows what it's looking for.  Using darkly-colored paper, for example, may result in jams if the copier thinks it's looking for white paper to pass through and it doesn't see it.

If the paper you are using is very thick and doesn't bend easily, you may want to disable duplex copying from that tray, so that no one uses it by accident.  Trying to run double-sided copies on very thick paper often doesn't work because the paper can't make the turns necessary to go through the duplex unit.

Once you've made your selections, press the OK button to save the changes.  When you exit out to the main Copy screen, the tray you changed should display the paper type below the paper size.

If you are using the copier as a printer too, you'll have to make the same paper type selections in the printer driver, otherwise you'll get a paper mismatch error every time you try to print from that tray.

(Originally posted on Helium.com, 2010)

(Image by Oliver Kugland from Pixabay)