laser printer question

[Jon Kettenhofen]

I've repaired and refurbished a few old monochrome HP and Apple printers
and my experience is this:  get the service manual - it's not that hard 
to do it yourself.

Here are some tips:
There's a special cleaning and rubber renewing compound that you can get 
from Amazon
and other sites.  Use that.  Never use alcohol because that will cause 
the rubber on the
rollers to disintegrate after a while (the rubber turns to sticky goo.)  
I've never oiled the
rollers and that seems dangerous to me.  Just disassemble carefully and 
clean all the
excess junk off the parts.  A rubber part needs replacing if it is 
sticky, or hard and fails
to grab the paper properly.

If the rollers or the paper feed don't work correctly, it may be time to 
replace them.
You can get service manuals, roller kits, maintenance kits and help from 
a site called
"The Printer Works".  They also sell refurbished laser printers. (I never
worked for them but I have ordered parts from them.)

Most of the old HP and Apple printers used OEM laser printer mechanisms 
from Canon.
If you are brave you can disassemble a burned-out fuser and replace the 
halogen
lamp inside, but be sure to get the wattage correct, usually 500 for the 
enterprise
printers or 300 for the personal (smaller) printers - but check the manual !

Search on line for a copy of the maintenance/service manual for your 
laser printer.
With a little perseverance you should be able to find one for free.  
Helpful persons
are on the internet who post them and there are probably some youtube 
videos as well.

If you don't mind the power consumption, the old enterprise lasers from 
Apple
and the HP lasers from the same era are a good investment - the only 
part difficult
to find is the power supply and there may be some clones available.  
When I worked
on these, some had printed over a million pages and were easily restored 
to fine
working order, producing copy that is indistinguishable from the first 
few copies.

Hope that helps,
Jon Kettenhofen


On 06/19/2013 10:34 AM, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> Back 20 years or so and we used to fix this by cleaning and oiling the
> rollers that grab the paper.
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 8:27 AM, Carruth, Rusty
> <Rusty.Carruth at smartstoragesys.com> wrote:
>> Hmm.  All I can say is that I don’t’ recall having that problem with any of
>> my home laser printers - I’ve had an Apple Laserwriter II, an HP or 2 (what,
>> HP 5? Don’t remember), and a color HP of some variety.
>>
>>
>>
>> Are the input guides set to the exact width of the paper?
>>
>>
>>
>> Other than that, I’ve no clue, sorry.
>>
>>
>>
>> Rusty
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org
>> [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Mark Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, June 14, 2013 10:00 PM
>> To: Main PLUG discussion list
>> Subject: OT: laser printer question
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We have an HP 1018 laser printer. It is not good about  keeping the paper in
>> alignment as the paper goes through the printer. For example, if the page
>> has a box 1/2" from the edges, the paper can slew slightly so that the
>> printed lines can be 1/8" closer to the edge at the top than at the bottom
>> (or vice versa). This happens from 25% to 60% of the time. For most things,
>> who cares? But if you're printing the master pages that will be used to make
>> copies of a newsletter, it is very bad. Trying to get copies with even
>> margins from a slewed master is not fun.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I have never seen a printer review that addressed keeping the
>> paper straight & in line as it goes through the machine. Does anyone have a
>> recommendation for a (reasonably priced) printer that does a good job of
>> this? Or even the name of a forum where I can go for advice?
>>
>>
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