I have a Brother HL-1270N laser printer that I bought years ago and is 
the best printer I've ever owned.  It does 12ppm, 600dpi, and has an 
integrated network print server that supports TCP/IP ("JetDirect"), 
NetBIOS/SMB, AppleTalk, POP3, and FTP.  Best of all, it speaks 
PostScript and PCL directly.  So the combination of raw network access 
and PostScript meant that this was the first printer I ever owned that 
worked *perfectly* with Linux right out of the box.  No foomatic, no 
messing around with finding similar printers, no messing with USB... it 
just *worked* instantly and perfectly.  So I have a fond place in my 
heart for this little workhorse and now that it's not working up to 
snuff, I would prefer to fix it rather than replace it.

The problem goes back to some months ago.  I was printing out something 
and accidently sent far too much data to it and it spooled up some 100 
pages.  I installed 32MB of memory in the printer so it can store 
*lots* with no easy way to cancel once queued.  The smart thing to do 
would have been to take out the paper and wait for it to run out then 
cycle the power to clear the cache.  Well, I didn't.  Instead, I turned 
it off while in the middle of printing a page.  This meant that I had a 
paper jam and to solve that, I physically yanked the paper through the 
mechanism.

Well, that did *something* not very nice.  Ever since, all pages that 
go through it come through with a background that looks like somebody 
rubbed fine charcoal over the entire surface.  They all look very 
dirty.  I replaced the toner and the drum, but to no avail.

My final remaining thought is that it's the fuser since, other than the 
drum/toner combo, it's the only remaining major component of the 
printer.  The problem is that it's not easily accessible.  I took apart 
the printer last night (lots of screws) but even if I can access it, I 
can't do much since it's self contained.

So why am I posting here?  Well, I'm hoping that somebody out there is 
experienced in cleaning laser printer like this and knows a way to 
clean a fuser.  Tape decks have cleaning tapes, CD driver have cleaning 
CDs... is there such a thing as a cleaning paper?  Failing that, does 
anybody have any other suggestions on what I can do?

Thanks,
Kurt

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