Brother International is a bunch of asshats

No, but regarding brands this is my experience: I had a Brother MFC (monochrome Laser all-in-one) and it was ok for several years, even with aftermarket toner. Eventually numerous paper jams ensued and eventually the electronics hung it up.

I replaced it with a Canon ImageClass unit and the difference was day and night. Nice and sound mechanical clicking and clacking noises instead of creaking noises, never a paper jam. Might be worth checking out a Canon product that suits your 11*17 requirement and other.

One thing that IMO goes in favor of Brother: Their software was much better than Canon's. Software architecture seems not to be Canon's strength.

HP: Their stuff always held up remarkably well. Even the old low-cost HP-5L still works and it's almost 20 years now.

Pre-Fiorina HPs worked great. I have a 6P that is still going strong since the 90s, and my desk printer is a 2300DTN duplex model that is amazing. I've heard less good things about their newer models, and it's perfectly possible for a set of toner to cost twice as much as the printer (see the 5500N model--$400 _per colour_).

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I have three HP CP1525nw LaserJet color printers. They are fabulous if you don't print a lot: a cartrige set costs more than the printer. They will sit patiently for months and then print beautifully.

We have a big B-size Sharp color digital copier/printer/scanner at work that's wonderful. It's reliable and takes toner by the bucket. B-size schematics rock. PADS doesn't really do schematics in color, but that would be cool.

We have a used HP 5100 b+w B-size printer, nice but we don't use it much any more because the toner cartrige is too expensive. Are there B-size inkjets around?

Phil Hobbs prodded the keyboard with:

Hi Guys,

I still have and use a HP Deskjet 500, at least until I run out of ink to refill my remaining good cartridge. I bought it just after they came out, when I retired my old dot matrix printer. So it must be getting on for 35 years or thereabouts.

Hi Phil,

My MFCJ6510DW is the best printer I ever had. If I should buy anotherone I woul upgrade to MFCJ6520DW with a second paper feeder.

May be there is a single issue?

Marte

The first thing I do before even considering a printer is to scope out whether it will accept after-market toner. If it doesn't then me no buy.

Ink is particularly expensive and I do not use inkjet printer anymore because it dried up in the hot summers here. The exception was an old HP DeskJet because one could re-ink cartridges via ink bottle and syringe. I got 3-4 uses out of each HP cartridge until the front was chafed too much.

Haven't looked lately, but there used to be 'B' size inkjets fro HP-BPD division in Singapore.

Full disclosure: I refurbish and repair Brother printers. I hate inkjet printers and prefer laser printers for everything. I am currently NOT an authorized Brother Service Repair Center.

I don't believe the MFC6490CW uses a shaft encoder for paper feed positioning. I think it's a stepper motor. What are the symptoms? If it's a paper jam message, try cleaning the encoder strip. Any ink on the strip will cause an initial self-calibration error and eventually produce some kind of error message. Replacement cost is about $5. PN LS4379001.

What exact model MFC-Jxxx printer? Did you check for updated firmware?

That's usually an indication of a head alignment problem. See: Actually, I've never bothered to compare test prints in that manner. Good idea... I'll try it next opportunity.

Did you try the test print with a genuine Brother cartridge? If the genuine cart produces a perfect test print, I might subscribe to your conspiracy theory. However, if it does the same thing as the aftermarket cart, I would look for another culprit.

Could you limit that to not buying another Brother inkjet product?

I have a few wide carriage inkjet printers in my palatial office. All are in need of some kind of parts or repair. I usually don't bother until someone needs a wide carriage printer. I'll send you my list if I find something worthwhile.

Agreed, with a few reservations. Mostly HP knew about chronic problems that affected longevity and did absolutely nothing to fix the problem in subsequent models. For example, the magnetized solenoid and decomposing rubber damper on the solenoids inspired many premature replacement. See example later in this rant.

Retch. I recycled most of those years ago due to chronic paper jam and fuser film deterioration problems. They were also rather slow.

That's my favorite laser printer. I have several. I've refurbished and resold about 12 more. If yours starts to paper jam in duplex mode, here's the fix: Internally, the HP LaserJet 2200 and 2300 are quite similar, except that the 2300 has an LCD display and more buttons to push. I've run into this problem eventually on most HP printers of that era and have found that I have to replace the froam rubber damper on all printers. For example, same story but on an HP LaserJet 4200:

It varies. Some good, some bad, some really bad. The more expensive printers seem to be quite tolerable. The cheap consumer junk printers are worthless. I forgot the model number, but there was one HP AOI LaserJet where HP must have really worked hard to provide the SMALLEST possible toner cartridge.

The comments by user "t9b" about 2/3rds of the way down the page on this Reddit post are very interesting:

Hey Jeff, any similar recommendation for aftermarket workhorse color laser printers? I have a very old HP 4500DN we use for printing manuals (and general use). Even genuine consumables are dirt cheap on ebay since everyone is throwing them out. But it is slow and big and heavy, and can have feed problems with our "silk" finish paper.

ssible toner cartridge. "

Sounds like mine.

CM1312MFP

And the sombitch doesn't want to even scan if it is out of toner. And they have the chips in the cartridges. There are aftermarket chips that fool the machine into thinking there was no usage. You have to glue them in. And th en, I tore up a used cartridge ad saw no easy way to do a refill. For one t hey simply don't come apart. If I ever get around to it I will really exami ne those spent cartridges and figure it out, but that is a very destructive process.

I am to the point where I think it might be better to just go to Officemax or whatever for printing.

It tries printing but spits the entire sheet at high speed after only one head pass. Looks like it's trying to advance the paper and doesn't think it succeeds.

Only about 10% of the spots are actually printed, and it's never the same ones. Pretty hard to explain that as a clog, I think. The serial number prints perfectly.

I have some on order--we'll see. If it flunks the same way, I'll report back.

Depends.

Thanks.

I'm currently looking at an HP 5500N, because I can get a refurb for $500ish and there's aftermarket toner available for about $100 per set.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Interesting. That's sort of like what I'm seeing.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

A client has a Sharp MX-something or other MFC. Altium color schematics never looked so good!

Tim

About a week ago, I tore down and refurbished a pair of HP 45500DN printers for a local appraiser. He also uses them for reports. 150K and 200K pages each. He wants to keep the printers going hopefully forever because of the low cost of ownership and reliability. He claims he can start a large print job, and go off to do something else, and know that it will be done without any problems.

However, the problem that precipitated a rebuild was not the usual worn rubber parts or cleaning. Despite my repeated warnings, he purchased some genuine HP "old stock" toner carts. However, there's a problem. Everything on eBay is "genuine" HP "old stock" which means they're old carts with an uncertain history. Caveat emptor. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, but after about 100 color pages, the prints started to look awful with toner splattered everywhere. My guess(tm) is the rubber scrubber blades inside the toner carts had age hardened and were not removing excess toner from the drums. Lots of cleaning, some pre-emptive rubber parts replacements, and different set of carts, and both printers now work normally.

Sorry, but I'm not going to recommend any printer I haven't sold, setup, played with, repaired, dissected, or otherwise had some experience using. Most of the stuff I have in the office are older home color laser printers, all of which have some type of limitation of chronic problem. If you're really using it as a printing press, I would avoid all the low end printers. They just don't last. Same for Brother, where the low end product are ummm... low end.

Incidentally, I picked up a semi-dead Brother (model number forgotten) color laser printer for $40 from a local recycler. I then burned about 15 hrs and $40 in parts, and it still dumps blue toner. Fixing b&w laser printers is fairly simple, but color seems is far more complex.

Also, if you want cheap Brother printers, look for the "refurbished" printers on Staples web pile: They're about half the price of a new printer and seem to be new in the box on arrival. Other than one printer with shipping damage, no problems.

Someone in New York, west of me and north of you, is selling a supposedly functional color laserjet 8550 for $450. Check the Albany craigslist. I hate paying to run inkjets.

Retch. That's a CP1215 with a scanner stuck on top. At best, it's ugly. I have a CP1215 with some broken/melted plastic parts. The previous owner put 50K pages on it in 2 months before it died. About all do is fix it for myself as I wouldn't inflict it on a customer. Hint: If heavily used, let it cool down by itself before turning off the power.

In the interest of accuracy, it doesn't finish the self test unless it's happy with the toner.

Of course. It's to guarantee your print quality. Do you think that any sane printer manufacturer is going to honor the warranty on their printer for even a few months if they suspected it's been running on whatever plastic dust is found in cloned cartridges? Extra credit to HP for also checking for an expiration date on some cartridges. HP does support aftermarket suppliers, but only if they do things the HP way, which now means a digitally signed certificate on the cartridge chip:

Double sided tape, super glue, contact cement, hot melt glue, etc. Not a problem.

Most carts have required drilling TWO holes. One to unload the toner accumulated in the waste bin. The other to empty what's left in the toner supply bin, and then refill it. I use aluminum duct tape to seal the holes.

Good luck.

Yup, classic wiper blade failure. Apparently, the wiper blades develop a "set" after sitting in the cart for a year or so, and won't apply sufficient pressure against the photoconductor roller to wipe it clean. Nothing you can do will fix them, as far as I can tell - I've tried just about everything. But, there are outfits that will sell JUST the wiper blades. Most want you to buy them by the dozen, but there are some places that will sell just one. The shipping will usually be more than the blade costs. I have been doing this on my HP 5m for some time, I buy those grey-market carts, and replace the wiper blade, and they work great.

Jon