View Single Post
  #6   (View Single Post)  
Old 29th July 2012
IdOp's Avatar
IdOp IdOp is offline
Too dumb for a smartphone
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: twisting on the daemon's fork(2)
Posts: 1,027
Default

Here's a follow-up about my investigations of this problem. Maybe it'll help a future reader, but mostly it's just rambling.

I looked for a cleaning slider on the cartridge, but didn't see one. I tried shaking it, with no effect. I think that is usually a trick used to coax a bit more toner out of a nearly empty cartridge, which is not the case here.

Looking at the cartridge, the drum turns out to be integrated into it (as for many HP cartridges, apparently). On top there's a long narrow opening through which a portion of something rounded and glass-like (the drum?) is visible. This had random bits and streaks of toner deposited onto it, moreso on the left side. "Aha" thought I "this fits the pattern of the page smears!" So I took a Q-Tip, wiped off the accessible smears, and printed a test page. Several iterations of this showed no improvement.

Then I looked inside the printer (cartridge removed). There's a long cylindrical roller there (I assume part of the fuser). I do recall, years ago when the problem was in its infancy, there had been some toner on this and I'd cleaned it off best I could, and that had helped, for a while. At that time the roller was more of a grayish black with some structure to the shading. Now, it was uniformly pitch black. Brushing it with a Q-Tip again showed it to be covered in a thick layer of toner. I tried to clean a small ring of it off at one end and that seemed to have some good effect. This I think is the end cause of the problem; this toner should not be there and some of it gets set onto the pages causing the smears.

So, this roller is very dirty and possibly corrupted beyond hope. And, toner can only come from the toner cartridge (doh), so the cartridge must be malfunctioning now too, as it releases toner copiously onto this roller. It seems then both the cartridge and the fuser may have to be replaced.

Looking into the costs of this, for cartridges it depends what you get. New OEM, rebuilt or just refilled. It varies from maybe $30 to over $100 depending. For the fuser, I didn't look thoroughly, but found some stuff available for $75 and well up. Taking into account two shippings, the cost of parts would likely run $150 ballpark. And there are risks to the repair: maybe more would need to be done, possible issues with customs/duty, and the fact I might just screw it up.

So I turned to the other option, a new printer, and was able to grab one on sale for $65 locally. Financially this was a no-brainer. It's an OKI B410d. Main drawback is it doesn't have Postscript, but there is software for that and after spending too much for PS on the HP, doing it on the cheap now seems worth a try. The printer is still in the box unpacked and can be returned within 30 days as I mull it all over.

Probably the HP 4ML will turn into a long-term back burner project. At best perhaps I can somehow clean the fuser and just get a cheap cartridge, but I'm not holding my breath.
Reply With Quote