laser printer troubleshooting

[garethp]

is the waste bit not in each cartridge ?

Ive only worked on HP printers so not sure about other makes but mono printers are built in with the toner, colour printer's with a transfer belt have a separate one and sometimes it's part of the belt assembly sometimes it's a separate waste bottle.

 

[aguycalledsteve]

Fuser unit/Drum would be the prime suspects.

I have a number of these HP Colour laser printers I have to service each year.

 

[Fazerruss]

Fuser unit/Drum would be the prime suspects.

I have a number of these HP Colour laser printers I have to service each year.

The problem is nothing to do with the fuser unit. The fuser is the last stage of the print process and this problem is evident well before.

The drums are suspect though as they are all covered in toner.
It could be a combination of drum/dev cartridge failure and ITB blade failure.

 

[Fazerruss]

I got one of those 2600n printers, like you dirt cheap, it streaked the copies, though not quite as bad as yours, and the belt doesn't look like "Joseph's amazing technicolour dreamcoat." As I have a couple of Mono lasers, I know it is almost always a cartridge problem when they streak, so fitted new "knock off" cartridges, old ones were almost empty anyway. Result, no more streaks, but it needed the optics cleaning at the same time, and since I did this the image colours don't line up, don't know if it is faulty cartridges, or if I disturbed something in the optics when cleaning.

Could be the photo sensors on the patern reader assembly need cleaning and then you would need to perform an auto colour gradation /colour registration adjustment.

 

[Fazerruss]

Ive only worked on HP printers so not sure about other makes but mono printers are built in with the toner, colour printer's with a transfer belt have a separate one and sometimes it's part of the belt assembly sometimes it's a separate waste bottle.

There's usually a waste toner receptacle built in to each drum unit plus one for the intermediate transfer belt assembly.
Machines with an ETB rather than ITB only have waster toner receptacle on the drums.

 

[garethp]

Fuser unit/Drum would be the prime suspects.

I have a number of these HP Colour laser printers I have to service each year.

Fuser problems are horizontal marks repeated down the page or lack of fusing. Also can be ghosting of the print.

 

[garethp]

There's usually a waste toner receptacle built in to each drum unit plus one for the intermediate transfer belt assembly.
Machines with an ETB rather than ITB only have waster toner receptacle on the drums.

Whats the difference between an ITB and an ETB? I'm curious as we've had 3 models of colour HP's at work and all 3 had belts, I think the oldest had a container under the belt but the two newer models definitely had tanks, one had a tank on the left side the other model had one on the front to the left of the toners.

I cant remember model numbers as we scrapped every single printer last year as the finance dept decided we were better off with nearly 20 copiers on never ending rental agreements but dont get me started on that one

 

[Fazerruss]

With an ITB (Intermediate Transfer Belt) machine the 4 colour images are transferred on to it overlaying each other then the belt rotates carrying the full image to the secondary transfer roller then the image is transferred on to the paper and finally the paper goes to the fuser.

With an ETB ( i would need to check the acronym, Electrostatic Transport Belt) the belt looks identical but instead the belt carries the paper under the drums transferring the image straight to paper then the paper goes to the fuser as normal.