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pmchem
Jan 22, 2010


What model of B&W laser with scanner would you guys favor between these options?

HP Laserjet Pro MFP M148dw https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-laserjet-pro-mfp-m148dw
vs.
Brother HL-L2395DW https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hll2395dw

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Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I'd pick the Brother because trying to navigate different scan option with a two line dot matrix display like the one on the HP is going to be frustrating.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Peachfart posted:

If it is literally feeding the short edge, then it is a very weird issue. But if it is feeding the long edge, I'd bet the drum charge roller is dirty and is causing the yellow line, and the black stuff is likely fuser related, with a possibility of the black drum having an issue. You can be certain if it is the drum or fuser by printing a few solid magenta or cyan prints. If the black ghosting stays the same color it is drum, if it changes to the printed color it is fuser.
Ugh I suppose that was a bit ambiguous, what I meant is that the paper goes in like this, so the short edge and yellow/black lines are parallel with the height (fuuuck or width?) of the drum cylinder:



ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

if you can pop the fuser out, just check that the heat rolls inside aren't damaged. If they're okay with no obvious nicks or tears, I'd probably lean towards the drum. The ghosting is probably some residual off-brand toner that's still in the drum, which should go away after a number of prints with proper toner
I think the fuser is fine. Or at least it was fine before I had to force it back in because I didn't realize I had to open the top cover to make it go in normally :v:

I suppose it could be the toner, I'm using aftermarket stuff (made for this model) but there's no way I'm buying OEM toner for a +10y.o. printer that might not even work properly. A $10 ebay drum is the most I can do for it, I think. For this reason, hopefully nobody loses any sleep over this. I just want to figure it out as a matter of principle at this point.


Anyway here's the best look at the fuser roller I could get. It's impossible to tell from the photo bu there are almost no signs of wear


There was this rubbery roller on the flip-out door below the fuser assembly. It was clearly dirty but cleaning it made no difference.


The drum below the fuser assembly (with the yellow warning labels at the top) has clearly visible text on it:


The actual drum was dirty again, but it does wipe off.



Anyway, I then printed a few pages of magenta followed by test pages:
P1: Yellow line, magentish tint to the smearing
P2: Lighter yellow line, black line, more obvious magenta tint
P3: Almost ok, some ghosting form the last page


P6 (new job). P7 (the pube is unrelated)


Honestly this feels like a complete disaster :) I then printed a page of cyan and the following test pages had clearly cyan stripes on them. So that would point at the fuser then?

Peachfart
Jan 21, 2017

Now I'm not an expert on this particular model of printer, but on any of my machines I'd suspect the itb(internal transfer belt) cleaning unit. If you get ghosting from literally every color it is the most likely option. Your fuser looks perfect and your drums look like crap(especially yellow which is where that line is coming from) but the ghosting is very likely to be the itb cleaning unit. I'm bored so I'm gonna look up your model and then update this post after I find out how your printer cleans the itb.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Thanks, definitely don't waste too much time but if you're bored I suppose it could be a fun way to spend some time :) I mentioned it before but so you don't have to look for it, it's a CLX-2160, and IIRC the printing guts are compatible with CLP-300. I don't think it has an ITB as such, the toner is dumped form the cartridge and distributed to the roller (that you can see in the 4th photo above) with a few screw gears. There was a problem with the metal plate that scraped excess toner off but I mostly fixed it by scraping off old toner. This roller then seems to directly transfer onto the drum.

Actually looking back at the first sample print, the yellow and black lines were already there, so at least it's not something I messed up with my repair attempts.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
I was today years old when I found out that the phaser 6700 has an interlock switch which cuts power to the laser, which is no big deal. However, this interlock is activated by the rear plastic cover being removed, which absolutely confused the gently caress out of me as I was looking to replace a HVPS and possibly the MCU board and wanted to keep the rear cover off to save some time

Peachfart
Jan 21, 2017

All printers/copiers should have a interlock switch on any covers that lead to major components for the sheer possibility that someone takes a laser in the eye and immediately goes blind. Like, no joke, you'd be blind in that eye permanently. Oh, and the lasers are invisible to regular sight, so fun times.
On my equipment the interlock cuts all power to 24v, leaving only 5v operational.

vaginite
Feb 8, 2006

I'm comin' for you, colonel.



Hey goons what the consensus on a home printer for graphics and materials, like stickers and transfers or whatever, just for hobby use? I can spend up to $500, mainly just looking for highest possible quality and not getting stuck in a corporate ink trap. It's just for hobby stuff too so I don't really need speed or volume and medium format is cool. The only other thing I care about but not really a sticking point is it being easy to load different kinds of paper into for a single print.

Canned Sunshine
Nov 20, 2005

CAUTION: POST QUALITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION



So what are the current views on HP Laserjets? I currently have a HP multi-purpose Officejet that just died on me, and it seems like to get it repaired is going to cost almost as much as the printer cost me itself.

Since my wife and I print and scan somewhat often, but maybe not often enough to keep inkjets from having issues, I have been looking at some of the laser printers with both scan and printing options. Based on reading the thread I had been looking at Brother and Canon, but I saw that Costco just put this HP Laserjet on sale, and so I wasn't sure whether it would be a good buy or if it's still best to avoid HP products.

https://www.costco.com/.product.100652793.html

SlowBloke
Aug 14, 2017

SourKraut posted:

So what are the current views on HP Laserjets? I currently have a HP multi-purpose Officejet that just died on me, and it seems like to get it repaired is going to cost almost as much as the printer cost me itself.

Since my wife and I print and scan somewhat often, but maybe not often enough to keep inkjets from having issues, I have been looking at some of the laser printers with both scan and printing options. Based on reading the thread I had been looking at Brother and Canon, but I saw that Costco just put this HP Laserjet on sale, and so I wasn't sure whether it would be a good buy or if it's still best to avoid HP products.

https://www.costco.com/.product.100652793.html

Seems decent, just be aware that there is a little bit of delay from sending the print to the printer spitting out prints that seems to be a bit slower than average on low end hp laser jet MFP

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
In honour of my last day as a field engineer before I embark on a higher paid desk-based role as a co-ordinating supervisor for a big account, I present: Copier In Room With Threatening Shelving Aura



Surprisingly, there was enough room in the hidey hole to detach the professional finisher and allow me to remove the parts - finisher PWB, compiler exit sensor, booklet in sensor and booklet gate solenoid - and not hit either the shelves or the out of shot bucket of stale water

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


...how many times have those brackets on the left pulled out of the wall

Also I hate Sharp devices, total dogshit

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends

Thanks Ants posted:

...how many times have those brackets on the left pulled out of the wall

Also I hate Sharp devices, total dogshit

I didn't ask, but the first time I went there I took one look and thought "if I turn around, everything will come falling down" but as I said, there somehow was enough room in there that didn't seem to exist at first glance. And I had nothing to do with the Sharp, just my belligerent Xerox box

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
I have an HP DeskJet 2600 All-in-One printer. I think it cost me about £35. The print quality's okay, but it keeps showing up on my wirelessly-networked Windows machines as offline, then I have to do a bunch of faffing about with its program to reconnect it, which is a bunch of trouble. It also doesn't feed paper correctly. I was doing a fifteen-page print job on crappy quality paper, and it couldn't grab a single sheet without help - I had to physically push the paper into the slot on the top, and occasionally it'd screw up and grab multiple sheets so I'd have to restart the print job.

I want something better... but I don't want to pay £200+ for a Brother printer. I'm mostly just printing RPG crap here (mostly character sheets, but in some cases it's colour paper minis, so quality is nice but not essential).

Is there something that's better than my current HP DeskJet 2600, but won't break the bank? I'd probably be willing to go up to about £100 for a decent, reliable colour printer. I have no use for a scanner or any of the "All-in-One" features, either.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Your budget can get you a decent mono laser printer with low running costs, you're not getting anything colour that isn't poo poo consumer inkjet for that money.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
Welp, Brother claims another wallet

Oyster
Nov 11, 2005

I GOT FLAT FEET JUST LIKE MY HERO MEGAMAN
Total Clam

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

In honour of my last day as a field engineer before I embark on a higher paid desk-based role as a co-ordinating supervisor for a big account, I present: Copier In Room With Threatening Shelving Aura



Surprisingly, there was enough room in the hidey hole to detach the professional finisher and allow me to remove the parts - finisher PWB, compiler exit sensor, booklet in sensor and booklet gate solenoid - and not hit either the shelves or the out of shot bucket of stale water

As a field engineer contracted to one of those big accounts, congrats.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends

Oyster posted:

As a field engineer contracted to one of those big accounts, congrats.

I'm basically being a field engineer and doing other support as well so that two of the sites don't need a field engineer to visit at all as I'll be doing that, and the other two sites which are miles away, the on-site contacts will be going through me before they do anything technical to streamline the process and reduce engineer visits. But all I've done so far is collate the total page counts for each machine, re-do the floor plans for each building on my site, clean out the guy who I'm replacing's stock cupboard - I found a scanner for a machine which had been ordered and replaced by an engineer who'd left the company four years ago on there - sending back two full boxes of spent toner and consumables, making a list of parts I want on site, and just getting everything to a place where I can feel comfortable having every machine working well. Then I'm actually going to start going round and doing monthly maintenance on them all as of next week, just to give myself something to do

Oyster
Nov 11, 2005

I GOT FLAT FEET JUST LIKE MY HERO MEGAMAN
Total Clam

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

I'm basically being a field engineer and doing other support as well so that two of the sites don't need a field engineer to visit at all as I'll be doing that, and the other two sites which are miles away, the on-site contacts will be going through me before they do anything technical to streamline the process and reduce engineer visits. But all I've done so far is collate the total page counts for each machine, re-do the floor plans for each building on my site, clean out the guy who I'm replacing's stock cupboard - I found a scanner for a machine which had been ordered and replaced by an engineer who'd left the company four years ago on there - sending back two full boxes of spent toner and consumables, making a list of parts I want on site, and just getting everything to a place where I can feel comfortable having every machine working well. Then I'm actually going to start going round and doing monthly maintenance on them all as of next week, just to give myself something to do

Ah. That sounds a lot like my present position, I'm technically a TSR(Site) now. I don't get to arrange my machines the way I want to, but have an office in the largest hospital of the account where I keep my parts and my docucare people go through me. I'm jealous of the free time, I've got around 2,500 machines and kept pretty busy.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends

Oyster posted:

Ah. That sounds a lot like my present position, I'm technically a TSR(Site) now. I don't get to arrange my machines the way I want to, but have an office in the largest hospital of the account where I keep my parts and my docucare people go through me. I'm jealous of the free time, I've got around 2,500 machines and kept pretty busy.

I have ~90 here and a dozen on another site, and I'm going to encourage the other docucares to come to me first. I've currently got a restricted network machine that shouldn't be where it is that I have to remove the hard-drive, altboot, reconfigure and shuffle back to where it originally was, and a smaller MFP that will actually be the proper restricted machine but I need to arrange all of the back end network stuff plus we have to work out where in this particular building we're going to put it. Naturally, covid is making this difficult

20 Blunts
Jan 21, 2017
im trying to gauge what to buy for small business/contractor's office.

i put out quite a few estimates every week, pay stubs and then send out hundreds of invoices, on top of some internal paperwork we have to do for our trade

we've kind of just been buying a new HP officejet every 1.5 years it seems (they start to die), and they are ink hogs and just kinda suck

is laser worth it at this point?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Mono laser is always worth it, except for colour lasers which you should lease with toners/drums/developer etc. included in a per-page price.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

mobby_6kl posted:

Thanks, definitely don't waste too much time but if you're bored I suppose it could be a fun way to spend some time :) I mentioned it before but so you don't have to look for it, it's a CLX-2160, and IIRC the printing guts are compatible with CLP-300. I don't think it has an ITB as such, the toner is dumped form the cartridge and distributed to the roller (that you can see in the 4th photo above) with a few screw gears. There was a problem with the metal plate that scraped excess toner off but I mostly fixed it by scraping off old toner. This roller then seems to directly transfer onto the drum.

Actually looking back at the first sample print, the yellow and black lines were already there, so at least it's not something I messed up with my repair attempts.
I think I'll just have to junk this thing. In addition to these issues, it now also constantly claims incompatible paper size and paper jams (that are fixed by opening and closing the door).

tater_salad
Sep 15, 2007


Thanks Ants posted:

Mono laser is always worth it, except for colour lasers which you should lease with toners/drums/developer etc. included in a per-page price.

Edit: for a corporate environment I would 100% buy lease a color printer with a per page print if you need color. Depending on printer you need all kinds of expensive printer parts to replace.

I got a STUPID cheap deal from canon for a color MFC (even if it's poo poo it was a good deal). I "needed" something color so I could start printing fancier beer labels and other things with my Plotter / Die-Cutter.
Canon Color laser MFC (with doc scanning only really 800x600 resolution). I wont buy an inkjet so many times I've had my ink dry out due to non-use.

1. Reman Printer
2. One full set of Toners (CYMK)
3. Another full set of toners (CYMK)
4. 2 year warranty for printer

It was a clusterfuck and I got my printer and then month later I started getting toner, but I shouldn't need new toner for several years now. Especially since I picked up an off brand black toner from amazon because I got tired of waiting)

tater_salad fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Oct 2, 2020

Moo the cow
Apr 30, 2020

Has anyone got any views/experience of the Canon TS5051?



The usecase works okay for an inket printer: (printing 10 pages per day, mostly black text but with full colour letterhead, every day), plus it looks pretty and takes up a small footprint, which is important for the location.
It's the older model that uses separate cartridges for each colour and I can get a complete set for £5

I have both a better scanner and a mono laser for use elsewhere, so those boxes are ticked.
(I have a Brother J725DW but the ink is relatively expensive)

Alternatives take a lot of deskspace and it needs to be a bit sleek.

Nuurd
Apr 21, 2005

I bought a small Brother document scanner (ADS2700W) to scan several hundred pages of documents.

Is there a thread recommendation for a software that has a good workflow for scanning en masse, and then sorting out which pages to save together and which to separate?

Ex: Perhaps I load 50 pages in the scanner , which I might want to save as one 16 page document, 4 single-pagers, and then one 30 page doc. I’d rather sort this kind of thing out on the computer instead of micromanaging which sets of docs I feed into the scanner.

nielsm
Jun 1, 2009



I don't know the name of any specific software, but the way to handle it is usually to have some separator pages with some kind of bar code printed, that instructs the software how to split or where to save the following pages.

Nuurd
Apr 21, 2005

nielsm posted:

I don't know the name of any specific software, but the way to handle it is usually to have some separator pages with some kind of bar code printed, that instructs the software how to split or where to save the following pages.

Ah, I see. Wasn’t quite the workflow I was hoping for, but I haven’t needed to deal with this before and didn’t know what was common. Thanks!

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


The ScanSnap scanners come with an Abbyy FineReader license, but it looks pretty expensive by itself

Nuurd
Apr 21, 2005

I ended up doing my work in separate steps. I am doing bulk scanning all into one big undifferentiated PDF, with OCR, auto-rotate, whatever. Then, I’m using PDF XChange’s split/merge tool.

That second tool gives me exactly what I want I think — I can look at all the pages and easily separate them into separate documents.

Thanks for the suggestions!

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
In January, I submitted a workcentre 3655 for a mechanical exchange because after three visits, a new hard drive, a new SD card, two new IP boards and a new MCU board the motherfucking bastard machine would not accept an altboot firmware upgrade (also, when it did boot-up, it was in Italian - so much for a "non scavenged from a deprecated machine Xerox"). Today, having been stuck on the site as docucare and knowing that the same machine was in storage, had been replaced but not disposed off, and knowing I had a spare SD card and HDD I had booked off on previous calls I figured I would throw them in and see if I could altboot the software on. Initial impressions were not good as I got a load of SD card errors, but after re-inserting the SD card, the machine stayed on (still in Italian) but didn't reboot after 15 seconds and instead... accepted the firmware reload and is now perfectly functional?

Oyster
Nov 11, 2005

I GOT FLAT FEET JUST LIKE MY HERO MEGAMAN
Total Clam

ShaneMacGowansTeeth posted:

In January, I submitted a workcentre 3655 for a mechanical exchange because after three visits, a new hard drive, a new SD card, two new IP boards and a new MCU board the motherfucking bastard machine would not accept an altboot firmware upgrade (also, when it did boot-up, it was in Italian - so much for a "non scavenged from a deprecated machine Xerox"). Today, having been stuck on the site as docucare and knowing that the same machine was in storage, had been replaced but not disposed off, and knowing I had a spare SD card and HDD I had booked off on previous calls I figured I would throw them in and see if I could altboot the software on. Initial impressions were not good as I got a load of SD card errors, but after re-inserting the SD card, the machine stayed on (still in Italian) but didn't reboot after 15 seconds and instead... accepted the firmware reload and is now perfectly functional?

Lollllllll.

I got a 6655 with basically the same thing. HDD, SD card, IP board. Haven't done MCU yet. If you submitted in January and it's still around, hell, take the free hotswap.

ShaneMacGowansTeeth
May 22, 2007



I think this is it... I think this is how it ends
Yeah, I was surprised to see it still in storage and had the SD card knocking about. I'm loathe to replace SD cards as they nuke the billing meters, but this one seemed to keep its data, so I just took the win and put it back in storage

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

I have a Brother HL-L2350DW. Am I saving much toner if I print text at 300DPI versus 600DPI? What about mixed text and images? I'm thinking if the toner blobs take the same amount of space on the paper, I can't be saving much if at all. The only way would be to lighten the printout so it's fixing less toner on the paper, aka Toner Save Mode.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

Lower DPI would just make printing faster, I doubt it would make a significant difference to toner consumption. Although it'll print fewer dots, they will be larger. The only difference might exist if you're printing a lot of tiny details that wouldn't print at 300 at all, like the coastline paradox



The draft / toner save mode definitely works though.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


300dpi is more than good enough for printing out normal documents

Dead Reckoning
Sep 13, 2011
I was printing a series of B&W documents today, and my printer stopped because it decided it was out of cyan ink. After an increasingly acrimonious phone call with Epson customer service, during which the customer service rep stated that the printer was programmed to use small amounts of colored ink for every black and white page, and would not print a black and white page under any circumstances unless I bought cyan ink, but could not provide a non-extortionate reason for why a printer would behave like this, I'm in the market for a new printer. Non-Epson.

I'd ideally like a printer/scanner combo with a color printing option for home office use, but I'm open to all suggestions at this point. Photo printing not required.

mobby_6kl
Aug 9, 2009

It's probably to prevent the inks from drying out and it's not just Epson doing this stuff. A laser B&W printer / scanner would be a good option if you could survive without color. Otherwise I'm not too familiar with modern inkjet stuff, though I've actually seen Epson recommended pretty often.

other people
Jun 27, 2004
Associate Christ
I bought an epson inktank printer and it broke within a month and now it is at the warranty repair shop and I hope I get it back before Lockdown 2 Electric Boogaloo because we'll probably need to print poo poo for the kid's online learning.

The printer was totally fine before it broke though!

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Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

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Serious Hardware / Software Crap › Printer Questions Threat: The printer was totally fine before it broke

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