Dear awakephd
it sounds like we have both had the same/similar experiences!!!
Nice to "meet" you, we need people like us!!
regards
Andy
----------------------------------------------
Hi, Andy,
Yes, I should have remembered that his original post said that both cartridges were doing it. I was going on the basis of the more recent post that corrected the information.
To be honest, though, I have seen this exact problem so many times that even if both of his cartridges had shown it, I would still have suspected the drums -- since both cartridges were off-brand recycled types. For some reason, an awful lot of the drums I've seen go bad produce nearly identical looking streaks down one side of the output.
Of course, the down-side of my diagnosis is, if I'm wrong, you've just invested $50-$100 in a new cartridge, while in the case of your diagnosis, all you've done is spend a few minutes looking for stray paper. In retrospect, might be better to look for the paper first! Though come to think of it, the only time I ever saw anything like this symptom caused by stray paper was way back in the "early days" of laser printers, when a client had run some labels through -- one of the labels had peeled up and gotten gummed up in the works. It was quite fun to get it all cleaned out ... !
Regards,
Andy Wakefield
--- In Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.com, "Andrew Mathison" <andrewdavid.mathison@...> wrote:
>
> Hi awakephd
>
> I was right, he posted the following (which I replied to AND it was also included in my reply), what do you say now Andy? At best it was totally missleading what he wrote or GIGO?:-
>
> Thanks for the info, everyone. I'll do a little more experimenting before giving up on the printer, but I'm going to hedge my bet and pick up an HP
> P1006 from Staples on the way home and return it if I can get mine working.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> I've got two off-brand cartridges, both of which seem to exhibit the same quarter-inch-wide stripe down the left third of the page and generally thin
> toner density, even with all of the settings properly set up for max density.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> The stripe makes me think that there's something else that needs
> maintenance, *on top* of needing a good toner cartridge (probably an official HP one). Just a replacement cartridge for this printer is north
> of $50 on eBay, which I would gladly do if I thought that was all I needed.
>
> Live and learn. This printer's still got plenty of life left in it, I
> think, just not for PCBs!
>
> --
> Brian Lalor
> blalor@
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Andy,
>
> I hate to disagree with someone who has such an excellent name, but I am 99% sure it is the light-sensitive drum that is contained in the HP toner cartridge, especially since Brian reported above that the second cartridge did not show this stripe.
>
> Note -- you are right the the problem is not the *toner*, but rather it is the drum in the toner cartridge that is at fault. I have seen this problem again and again when the drum begins to go bad. On printers with separate toner and separate drum, that is very bad news, because the drum often costs more than a new printer. On HP's, however, you replace the drum every time you replace the toner cartridge. The problem you can run into with a low-cost recycled cartridge is that they only replace the toner. That's fine if the drum is still good, but doesn't help at all if the drum has gone bad.
>
> FWIW, I am pretty sure the HP 4050 is a true laser printer, not LED or LCD.
>
> Regards,
>
> Andy Wakefield
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
Greetings from
Andy Mathison
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]