The fi-8170 TPU pick arm.
The arm is not a clip-on accessory. It goes in where the scanner's top roller sat and takes over that roller's job of holding back the cards underneath the top one. Fitting it means taking that roller out, which is why the install is worth reading before you open the scanner.
What it does
One roller comes out. Only one.
A document scanner separates a stack with two parts working against each other. The pick roller underneath drives the bottom card forward, and a roller above it holds everything else back so only one card goes at a time. The TPU arm takes the place of that upper roller. It is softer, so it does the same holding-back job without scuffing card faces the way the rubber roller does.
That is the whole reason a roller has to come out. It is not optional and it is not damage. What matters is that it is the top roller and nothing else.
Leave the pick roller in. It sits underneath the cards and it is what drives them forward. Removing both is the single most common install mistake, and it gives you a confusing mix of symptoms: some cards will not feed at all, and others go through in a clump. If your arm is fitted and the scanner behaves that way, check this first.
The fit
Fitting the arm.
The timestamps are chapters in the install video, so you can jump straight to the step you are on.
Open the scanner
Video 00:16
Power the scanner off and open the ADF so the roller assembly above the paper path is reachable.
Remove the top roller
Video 00:28
This is the roller the arm replaces. Keep it somewhere safe. It goes back in if you ever want the scanner on paper duty again.
Do not touch the pick roller underneath the cards.
Prepare the paperclip pivot
Video 01:18
The arm pivots on a bent paperclip. Use a paperclip, bent as the video shows, rather than a pin or a sewing needle. Those are the usual substitutions and they do not hold the arm the same way, which shows up later as cards going through several at a time even though the arm looks correctly fitted.
Too tight and the arm cannot drop onto the stack. Too loose and it wanders off the card.
Fit the spring
Video 02:06
The spring is what puts pressure on the stack, so it is the step worth checking twice. Misseated or fitted the wrong way round, the arm has no down force at all, rides up over the stack, and lets several cards through at once.
Final assembly
Video 03:35
Close everything up and run a short test stack before you commit to a session. Look at the first five or six images. If two or three cards appear in one picture, overlapped like shingles, they physically went through together and the separation is not right yet.
Loading
The arm does not make the hopper bigger.
Ricoh rates the fi-8170 feeder by stack height rather than by a card count: the document stack has to stay under 10 mm. A raw card is about 0.3 mm thick, so that works out at roughly 30 cards, and fewer once they are in penny sleeves. The 100 sheet figure on the spec sheet is 80 gsm office paper, about a third the thickness of a card, so it does not apply here.
The arm does not raise that ceiling, and it is at its weakest near the top of it. The arm pivots down onto the top card, so the fuller the chute, the shallower its angle and the less weight it can hold back. That is why the first few cards of a brim-full load are the worst and things settle as the stack drops.
If you need more than a chute at a time, the answer is a feeder, not a taller stack. The Laskis AutoLoader 1000 holds 1,000 raw baseball cards or 1,300 Magic and Pokemon and tops the scanner up as it takes them. It is for raw cards only. It is listed with the rest of the kit on our hardware page.
If it still misfeeds
Work through these in order.
Cards going through several at a time is separation failing at the pick. No scanner or crop setting in SortSwift changes it, so start at the hardware.
Load less
Free, instant, and the most common fix. Riffle the cards so they are not stuck face to face and load about half a chute. The scanner's own manual gives this as the remedy for both non-feeding and overlapped documents.
Confirm only the top roller came out
The pick roller underneath has to still be there.
Check the spring, then the pivot
A misseated spring leaves the arm with no pressure. A pin or needle in place of the paperclip pivot changes how the arm sits.
Slow the pick down
On the scanner, press Menu, select 2: Pick Speed and set it to Slower. That delays the start of each pick, and Ricoh lists it specifically for when overlapped documents or jams happen often. Scans take longer as a result. On Windows the same setting is in the Software Operation Panel under Device Setting 2.
Do not reach for the Manual Feed button. Manual Feed Mode is meant for envelopes and folded documents, not a stack of cards. It feeds one item at a time and it switches the ultrasonic double feed sensor off, which is the sensor that would otherwise catch the doubles you are trying to eliminate. The scanner tells you as much when you press it: the display reads Manual Feed (Multifeed Detection is disabled).
On a Simple Sifter that ultrasonic sensor is switched on for you, so a doubled card stops the scan and never reaches your images. If doubled cards are turning up in your images, that sensor is not being used, which means the scanner is being driven by something other than the Sifter.
Before you buy
What it fits, and what it does not.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which scanner | The Ricoh / Fujitsu fi-8170 only. It does not fit the fi-7160. |
| Which cards | Raw and penny sleeved. Toploaders and card savers are too thick to feed through the ADF at all, arm or no arm. |
| How many at once | Under 10 mm of stack, which is roughly 30 raw cards and fewer sleeved. |
| Do I need a 3D printer | No. The arm is sold ready made. If you do print your own, use TPU with your slicer's stock TPU profile, since there are no special values built into the model. |
| Is the roller removal reversible | Yes. Keep the top roller and refit it whenever you want. |
| Published tolerances | There are none. We do not publish a spring rate, an arm height or a contact force, so compare your install against the video rather than against a number. |