Printers And Rookie Mistakes

I have a Brother Laser Printer I have been using for a few years that I really like. Well, the black on it started to streak badly. It got tot the point this weekend where the entire page from top to bottom had a complete coat of grey on it.

This kind of streaking is usually associated with a bad drum unit. The brother printers have the drum and the toner as separate cartridges.

Directions from Brother's website say to clean the drum with 91% isopropyl alcohol and if that doesn't work, you'll need to replace the drum.

Well, in order to buy a drum unit, I would need to buy a set of 4, at $150-175, and I would need to wait until probably Wednesday to get them.

And it was Saturday, and mu kids needed to print stuff for school this weekend.

So, I cleaned the drum for the black toner and it made NO difference.

At the point I decided to go out and buy an inkjet printer.

I went out and bought an Epson ET-2750, which is one of the new Epson EcoTank printers that is supposed to come with 2 years worth of ink.

Set it up, and, of course, I had to test it with stamp pages.

It printed wonderfully.

I always liked the idea of inkjet printers, but my printing habits were not conducive to owning one. I print in large spurts and then the inkjet sits around for months sometimes unused. This causes the printer nozzles to dry out.

Laser printers, on the other hand, can stay unused for years and will just print.

At this point I am trying to decide what to do with the Laser printer. For now, I just moved it to a table and proceeded to clean out the "printer drawer" that has all my assorted papers and other stuff.

Buried in the drawer, I find a black toner cartridge. At this point I figure, what the heck, and pop the toner in the printer. And it fixes all my printing problems.

So, now I have two working printers. I guess I'll report back in a couple of months and let you know how the inkjet is working out.

I guess I could return the inkjket, but I feel kinda strange doing that, since I already dumped all the ink bottles in it.

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I switched from laser printer to inkjet printer a few years ago because of the "used" toner.

(An inkjet only sprays the ink that it needs; the toner is applied to the drum, 'sticks' where the drum is charged and, otherwise, goes to waste.)

But the inkjet printers seem to be spraying money, instead of ink; and the after-market re-loaded cartridges vary in quality from cartridge to cartridge.

Towards the end of the printer's life, you have to go thru a couple of cartridges before you can be sure that the problem is the printer, and not the cartridges.

That leaves you with a dead printer and a batch of gently-used cartridges.

Not long ago, I replaced my long-serving finally-failing HP all-in-one with an Epson all-in-one ... the last Epson product I will ever buy.

Every printer I've ever owned will print with a bad cartridge; you might be missing that color but, many times, this is not terribly important ... you really need the words, for example, even if the accompanying photo is messed-up.

But this little (expletive deleted) Epson printer will not print if it does not have four good ink cartridges.

And, no, it will not print color-as-gray-scale if one color is bad; it will not print anything at all. Period.

It's gone, and I'm thrilled with my new HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw.

YMMV,

/s/ ikeyPikey

My only issue with HP LaserJets is that HP chips their toner, so you can't buy 3rd party toner cartridges.

My experience was to leave Inkjet for Laser, and haven't looked back.
Similar experience with toner, I have a Brother Laser Mono ($53) and I can use 3rd party toner for around $10 .
Having troubles with my previous Printer similar to Apastuszak' , (Life of about 6 years, bad drum) I just bought a new printer.

(Not good for the planet though, they seem to build machines as throw aways)

They sell re-manufactured drums. Don't know what availability is like in Australia, but in the US, I found that I can get a full set of re-manufactured drums for US$60-$70.

Older HP printers used to have the toner and drum together in one unit, so when you replaced the toner, you automatically replaced the drum. But even with that, eventually you'll need a fuser unit and new rollers. And those get discontinued by the manufacturer. And once they're discontinued, the price for them goes WAY up.

There are pluses and minuses to each format. You need to choose which ones works best for your use case.

Laser/LED Printer:

**PROS**

1. Never dries out.
2. High page count per toner
3. Can use generic toner (unless it's an HP printer)
4. Can print on paper that would cause inkjet printers to feather.
5. High print speed

**CONS**

1. Toner is basically melted plastic onto paper and will easily stick to vinyl and possibly other types of plastic.
2. Color reproduction is not as good as other types of printers.
3. Heat causes the paper to curl, especially when you're using thicker paper that requires the fuser unit run hotter.
4. When you need new drums or fuser unit, it can cost as much as a new printer.

Inkjet Printers:

**PROS**

1. Much better color reproduction than laser printers.
2. Dye based ink actually dyes the paper and soaks into it, creating a more permanent bond than toner.
3. Paper does not curl or get warm when printed on
4. Relatively inexpensive and quiet

**CONS**

1. Print heads prone to clogging if not used regularly.
2. Certain types of paper will cause the ink to feather and give you fuzzy letters and pictures. (This problem has mostly been fixed by Epson's new pigmented inks)
3. Ink can be expensive. New line of tank printers help with this.
4. Print speed slow.

I think the best printer I ever had was my HP Deskket 932C. It was an inkjet printer that was built like a tank. The thing was HEAVY and the bottom and insides were all metal. It took generic cartridges without issue. I would love it on 24/7 and would occasionally hear it kind of buzz and move the print heads. I think it was just shooting a tiny amount of ink through the print heads to make sure they didn't dry. In the 10 years I owned that thing, I think I only ever had to do a print head cleaning twice.

Then I bought a duplexer for it, which made it stick out of the shelf an extra 4-5 inches. My wife was leaning down to pick up a printout that fell on the floor and the printer came crashing down and the front tray snapped off.

I don't think newer printers are doing these mini cleaning cycles, because they're all designed to be as energy efficient as possible.

In my perfect world, I would do all my bulk printing on the laser printer, and print the stamp pages out on the Inkjet. But I don't print stamp pages out that often, so that would be a waste.

But I guess now that I have 2 printers in the house, I can do that.

I use Laser and do not print much color. I have an old mono Brother (many years) and still prints when needed. I also got a HP color laser and it prints better and does not curl the end up the paper like the Brother. Now, the HP also is finicky when one color gets low but had 3 color plus back toner cartridges.

Apastuzak, I have the Brother mono print/scan/photocopy laser printer about 17ppm. Bought it onsale for $100 cdn + tax.

After the orig. Cartridge went low on toner about 1 1/2 years later, I purchased 4 aftermarket OEM extended print/xtra ink cartridges and spare drum from ebay site for about $35.00 US + 10 shipping. Have had great success as the first cartridrige has been going for about 2yrs now and printed hundreds of pages. They are all brand new, and the Brother brand cartridge alone in Canada would cost me close to $100 cdn. With taxes in, and the quality is just as good as the original Brother brand. The Brother brand drum cartridge in Canada is about $150+tax.

Tried inkjet and they have to constantly be used as you mention and do cost much more to operate. I still have the HP printer you mention and the inkcartridges were well over 50ml. Each. I picked up an armful of remanufactured cartridges for $5. each when Zellers cleared them out years ago and still have two remaining. Old but good stuff.

Oh, Brother! I had a Hewlett-Packard printer that lasted 12 years and never had a problem printing approximately 100 stamp pages.

100 pages??? I do that in an hour with my HP inkjet. I have printed several thousand pages. My Major gripe with HP is even though I print all of my pages in Black, the printer steals ink from the color cartridge. I have gone through countless color cartridges without ever printing a color page. I end up purchasing one color cartridge for every three black ink cartridge.

My last two printers were Brother 3 in 1s, both inkjet. No real problems to speak of but they're fun and games to configure with a linux system!

I rarely print in colour and I can get my cartridges refilled which saves money.

I have printed with many printers and types over the last 35 years...
I have come to boycott HP printers for two reasons:
1) They "stop making drivers" for older printers under new OS's so you HAVE to buy a new printer. (Lame)
2) For a period of time they had an "expiration" on ink or toner cartridges, and ikeyPikey if you think you are annoyed at it not printing because one tank is out of ink, how about it not printing because one tank (though totally full of ink) is "expired". I was furious with that.

I then went to Canon printers. I've been using only Canon printers since then. I have a very high end A3 ink-jet Canon printer that I use exclusively for photo printing. Photos print better on inkjet than laser because you get greater color variation in the base inks, and better blending.
I use a Canon multi-function for everything else. And while they have a "warning" when the toner gets "old" it doesn't stop you from printing with it, it just beeps and says "We can't guarantee the quality of the print" I had that message for over a year when the toners finally did start to fail from being low. Replaced with new toners, all fine.

The only thing I wish I had done was bought an A3 laser at the time instead of my A4. I've been waiting now for 6 years for it to die, and it shows no sign of doing so... I print in big volumes at times, and then not at all for months... those printers have been just work horse stunning. So, highly recommend considering the Canon, as they are pros in the print world, and both their inkjets and lasers are far superior to HP.

My opinion is that you get what you pay for with printers and the critically important consumables. Buying a great printer does not matter much if you cheap out on the ink/toner and paper. And there are ways to get great quality color laser prints. I am currently printing some color brochures on a color laser that are almost indistinguishable from inkjet output (admittedly on costly paper). Another down side is that inkjet printed pages do not hold up as well as laser printed pages over time. (Source; Institute of Museum and Library Services - Preservation Self-Assessment Program - University of Illinois)

I recommend refurbished business color lasers if you want a printer you can count on year after year. The Xerox Phaser was introduced in 2002 at $3100, I purchased mine refurbished in 2005 for $350 (I also placed 4 others with friends and family at the same time). They are all still in service today and been printing great for the last 14 years. Drivers have never been an issue, they work fine with every OS I have used. The cost of consumables has also dropped every year. A few months ago I purchased a new OEM Xerox transfer roller AND 4 new OEM Xerox high capacity toner cartridges for under $30 delivered to my door. (Just checked, same bundled deal now available for $26). So the total cost of ownership over the years is easily that of a cheap, throw-away, inkjet printer.

Of course a large business class laser printer are typically behemoths; mines weighs 80 pounds. Power consumption is usually around 100 watts when not asleep and firing up the laser in this class printer results in an end rush surge which can momentarily dim the lights in your house! (Just kidding, but it is quite an end rush at powerup.)
Don

I have a Brother laser printer so I was curious and checked. I can easily buy 1 replacement drum. What model does the OP have that he is forced to buy 4 at a time?

I have an HL-3170CDW.

From my research, I only saw genuine drums from Brother sold as 4 packs. Third party drums I could find individually.