Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer

Subject: Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer
From: John J
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 11:55 AM

Help!

Sorry to bother you all with a non-musical query, but I'm really stuck, and the Mudcat ALWAYS comes up trumps!

I've got a Brother HL-1030 Laser printer, and very nice it is too, or it was until this week.
Recently it has been printing 'dirty' copies. The control panel told me to replace the drum, so I did. At £85.50 + 17.5% VAT it's an expensive do.

No change.

The online help told me to replace the toner cartridge, so I did. At an additional £46.50 + VAT I'm now not too far off the price of a complete new printer.

Still no change.

The Brother website tells me to call out a Brother engineer...this will be VERY expensive. The local Brother office here in Manchester can't advise.

Any ideas anybody?

I guess there'll be some sort of high voltage bias twiddler on the PCB, but I can't locate anything without going for deep surgery.

BTW, I'm familiar with high voltage (1kv+)techniques, and have a reeasonable amount of test kit (meter, 'scope, etc.)

Thanks.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 12:12 PM

I had a similar problem with my HP 4. The first thing I did was clean the dust brush in the output path. The next step was to replace the toner cartridge. Finally, I took a vacuum cleaner to the thing using the skinny head and picked up every bit of crud and crap I could get out of the whole thing. That was six months ago and I haven't had a problem since.

I know how frustrating these things can get--and how hideous the printing can look until you get it right. It seems the original problem was the toner cart. That made such a mess that the rest was necessary. If you haven't disposed of your drum assembly, it might be salvageable with a good cleaning.

Subject: RE: Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:37 PM

As EBarnacle says, the first step is to carefully get all the accumulated crud out of the insides of the machine.

You can occasionally get some improvement by "cleaning" the roller that holds the paper against the fuser using a rather simple expedient of printing a solid black strip on a sheet of paper, turning it over and running it back through the machine.

The pressure roller can pick up crud, and it runs against the actual fuser drum "between sheets," so it can contaminate the drum surface. Since the fuser drum is hot it can also pick up crud just from normal printing - which it may transfer to the roller. With the black-printed area against the roller, the fuser that actually "locks" (melts) the ink onto the paper will soften the "backside" enough to suck up (some of) the trash.

Some older HP laser printers ran a test print automatically each time you inserted a new toner cartridge, with an appropriate "black stripe" and instructions to turn it over and run another test print as a "cleaning cycle."

If you have Word, you could make a "cleaning sheet" by putting a box around a 10 or 12 line paragraph, and setting shading to black, then setting font color to white. (Be sure you have the whole paragraph selected, Chose Format - Borders and Shading. On the Borders tab, Click on a Box, then click the Shading tab and select Black. Next chose Format - Font and select color White. It should give you a solid black area with white letters.

Print it, turn the sheet over and print it again - if you don't have printing on both sides, turn it over different and print again.

There are no guarantees on this, and if it doesn't work the first time or so, you'll need to look elsewhere. (About 2 passes of the same sheet usually fuses the ink so much it won't pick up anything anymore, and if one sheet doesn't do it, you've probably got a different problem.

If cleaning doesn't help, the most likely thing I can think of is a bent or broken "charge wire," or misplaced discharge brush.

(BTW - "replace toner cartridge" is a maintenance procedure? Is this a 'bin-charged' printer? I'll have to go look at Brother. I "burn up" a toner cartridge about every other month - and get all new parts in the critical places.)

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 05:48 PM

I don't find the HL1030 still listed at Brother's site, but you can download a .pdf manual for the HL1040 (similar?) at HL-1040/HL-1050 Manual that might be helpful. If yours is more similar to something else current, try Brother Manuals Index

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Help:HL1030 Laser printer
From: CraigS
Date: 15 Nov 02 - 06:02 PM

If you've cleaned out any crud in the path and polished the rollers, try cleaning the fuser wires - you have to be very careful not to stretch them in any way when you do this. Use non-linting cloth moistened with vodka, and give it time to dry before you switch back on.