Do laser printers ever show gradual symptoms of running out of toner or do they always suddenly go blank? I've got a cheap Samsung (ML-1210) and it hasn't been working properly lately. Text looks faded, and graphics have a lot of the detail missing altogether. I've double checked the enconomy settings and tried it in Windows as well as Linux (with CUPS). Setting the toner density to its highest in the driver settings helps a bit, but it still doesn't seem right.
Tony Houghton
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I'm curious as to why you think a laser printer would suddenly start producing blank output. The answer is that the prints will go lighter until the print is so light that you won't see anything.
If the printer has a separate toner hopper, take it out and shake it so that all the toner ends up at one end. Do the prints go dark at that end? If they do, I think you know the answer :-)
Chris Walker
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That's good news, it sounds like all it needs is a new cartridge or refill after all. I'm surprised it's lasted so long, seeing as it's likely it may have been short-filled to keep the price down. Not having used a laser until it's run out before or knowing how the toner gets onto the drum other than that it involves a static charge created by the laser, I thought it would be normal for them to go blank like inkjets rather than gradually fade.
Tony Houghton
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The laser doesn't create the static charge. A high voltage wire around the drum generates a static charge and the laser is used to selectively discharge it. I really should get round to completing the article I promised to do explaining how laser printers work.
Chris Walker
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In fact, I always understood that when a laser printer's toner was running out, taking the toner cartridge out and shaking it from side to side would evenly distribute the toner, and make it last a bit longer...
Dane Koekoek
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That assumes that there is a modicum of toner in the hopper to start with of course :-)
HP suggest shaking the toner hopper as a matter of course. One of the dangers can be where there is a combined toner and developer unit. You definitely don't want all the developer material at one end. It can end up in the bottom of the printer.
Chris Walker
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The effect of low toner depends on the printer. My ancient Canon LBP-4 (HPLJ4?) tends to go streaky first, with vertical bands of fainter print. Shaking the cartridge to redistribute the toner helps here until the thing is even lower, when there's a fairly rapid tailing-off in contrast, though no sudden stopping.
My mother's HP colour LaserJet on the other hand is "clever" and keeps track of how much toner has been used. Occasionally you see it beginning to go faint sometime after one of the "low toner" warning lights comes on, but more often than not the printer will suddenly refuse to print at all when it has decided that a cartridge is empty. Even if it's a colour cartridge which has gone, we've not yet found a way to get it to carry on printing black-only documents (MacOSX).
Hwyl!
Martin Angove
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A possible reason for that (bearing in mind that I have never had one apart to know for certain) is that the colour developer unit is brushing against the drum all the time and without the toner to act as a lubricant, it can wear away the drum. As for monitoring the toner, some machines check toner levels in the hopper and also monitor toner density. If the density is low, then it will add toner. If the toner level is deemed to be low or out, then the machine will stop until it is replenished.
Chris Walker
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While searching for a toner refill for mine I saw that you could buy replacement fuses for the more "sophisticated" models with a toner empty indicator, otherwise they don't work when refilled.
Tony Houghton
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I used to run a small office IT department and we had a couple of colour printers, one laser and one solid ink. Solid ink was much more convenient in almost every way. Its fast, you can replenish the ink any time (before it runs out), there are very few throw-away parts and the quality is excellent. The only disadvantage is that you can't laminate the output as the ink melts. See http://www.office.xerox.com/page/solidink/index/enus.html
Gruß
Peter Lancashire, Düsseldorf
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Comparing my memories of the Phaser with my mum's colour laser, I'd have said the Phaser was much brighter and bolder and the colours mixed better, but although that's great for graphics and illustrations, I'm not sure it would work so well for photographs. But then I've not seen Phaser output for a while.
Hwyl!
Martin Angove
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