I tend to buy the industrial stuff, but at their lower end, because the extra expense is worth it for better quality.
Sometimes the industrial stuff is cheaper as well. Like for instance metro wire shelves.
And one of my selection criteria was weight, with heavier preferred (meaning more metal and less plastic).
The color was never all that good to be sure, but it was good enough for me. Nor did I clean the belt all that often.
It worked well for many years, but it developed problems as it became elderly. In all cases, the underlying problem was that some rubber or plastic component had aged and become glazed. Disassembly and cleaning with a fiberglass brush followed by ethanol wiping helped a lot. The famed "Stable 32" error was fixed by a carefully placed piece of mylar tape that prevented sticking.
But finally it all had worn out too much, and the common wear-out parts could no longer be purchased anywhere. And while toner was still available, the large-capacity cartridges were not, which I took as an omen.
And after 15 years, it owed me nothing, and many things were greatly improved over those years. The new printer is twice as fast as the old printer, and the color is far better. And does not misfeed when humidity is low.
Will do, thanks
Joe Gwinn
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Jeff Liebermann
For printers, I buy new printers for my customers and inherit their previous printer for free or at least a substantial discount on my labor charges.
An industrial printer is what's used for commercial production printing. These are well above the needs of the typical small business. For example, what small business needs a printer that can continuously print bills, promotional literature, tickets, etc all day long? Running a business class printer continuously like that would kill it rather soon. At this time, business class can perhaps print
25,000 pages before requiring all the plastic and rubber parts need to be replaced. I've maintained ancient LaserJet 4 and 4 Si printers, which printed about 125,000 pages before needing any major service. Yes, that would be nice for home use, but certainly overkill. HP and others realized that such a long life printer would not be a good thing for a company that made and sold printers, so they redesigned the stamped steel tank of a printer into a lower cost but shorter life all plastic toy.
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I have several rows of those shelves (on rollers) in what used to be my bedroom. When I retired and closed my formerly palatial office, all the storage racks and most of the junk on them, were transported intact into my house. The #1 project for the last 4 years has been to purge the junk and get rid of the industrial warehouse decor.
As I get older, cost has become the primary criteria. I don't expect or want to live longer than my furniture and toys.
I'm told that it is possible to get descent color from the Brother MFC-9840CDW. However, it requires tearing it apart and cleaning the toner dust off the color calibration optics and sensors. To maintain the color settings, don't let loose toner collect inside the machine, especially around the waste box.
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Notice that waste toner box is only good for: Page volume: Approximately 20,500 pages with 5% coverage. As you approach this limit, clean out the waste toner box or you will soon be dealing with a big mess. (Clue: Nobody does this until it's too late).
Ummmm... I think you mean "Print Unable 32" error message. The means you have either paper, or more likely labels, stuck on the rollers or drum. If it's the fuser roller or imager drum, and you get anywhere near them with any kind of cleaner or solvent, you'll destroy the coating. Don't ask me how I learned this fact. Even isopropyl alcohol is to strong. Instead, I use hot water, to melt the stick label glue or scrape off the glue with a Teflon kitchen scraper.
I won't say anything about resurfacing the roller using mylar tape except that I've never tried it, don't think it will work, and have no intention of trying it.
Also, most of the solvents will attack rubber and cause it swell. Resurfacing the rubber rollers with wire bushes, sandpaper, file cards, and other mechanical methods will work if the rubber is reasonably intact.
The way it works is that the rubber cracks as the plasticizer evaporates from the rubber. It's the plasticizer that makes the rubber flexible. It also provides a high friction surface. What alcohol and other solvents do is remove the plasticizer. This causes the rubber roller to swell and eventually harden. Whenever I found a rock hard rubber roller, it was either from old age or someone had tried to clean the roller with alcohol.
I once bought a bottle of "rubber renewer" on eBay. Nasty smelling stuff but it did the job. It seemed to be a mixture of xylene and some kind of oil. The idea was to expand the cracked rubber surface which allowed the oil to migrate into the cracks. Xylene evaporates very quickly which prevents deep penetration in the rubber. That allows enough oil to replace any lost plasticizer and also not turn the rubber surface into a sticky goo. It worked fairly well, but a new replacement rubber roller lasted longer. If possible, I flipped over the rubber on plastic rollers before using rubber restorer.
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Jeff Liebermann
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Nope. It was printed using a monochrome typewriter. We didn't have color laser printers in 1961:
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Cursitor Doom
That's not the same certificate that was originally posted on the White House website and caused all the furore around the forgery accusations, though. The original image was a clumsy composite paste-up job and a clear and obvious forgery. This is a different image altogether (but at least this time they've remembered to flatten it!)
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Joe Gwinn
Here I am both customer and tech.
Yes, and these cost tens of thousands of dollars minimum. Only large companies have these.
That would be a the all-plastic wonders. I've gotten far more from the Brother, and from the legacy HP printers that proceeded it.
My first laser was a HP LaserJet 5MP bought in 1996 for about $1K, as I recall. It needed few repairs, although I did upgrade the memory to max when that became cheap. I finally recycled it circa 2015. It still worked, but with crippling limitations, like inability to handle most modern print file formats. And sunlight had made some critical plastic components to become brittle and crack.
Yes. But I've found the Brother units quite suitable. Also, this is not just a printer, it's an all-in-one units.
I also won't have the energy or maybe ability to do much repairing as I get grayer and grayer.
Ahh. So that's why. Wonder if Brother has improved that part of the design. One assumes so, after 15 years.
Hmm. The 9840 started to complains about that, so I dutifully replaced the waste toner box well in time.
Yes, its "Print Unable 32". I don't print labels or the like. Or envelopes. Too much trouble.
The piece of tape was on a location sensing pad of some kind; don't recall where. The rollers I was resurfacing were made of rubber of some kind, and were not destroyed by this treatment.
Ethanol is safe.
The rollers that needed the treatment were already glazed, probably due to plasticizer evaporation, and the objective was to physically remove the hardened layer and remove the sanding grit and debris using the ethanol. This did not re-glaze the rollers. The exposure was short.
I looked at that. It lists C3H8O and C8H8O3 as ingredients.
The first is also known as isopropyl alcohol.
The second is probably a plasticizer, but many chemicals answer to that formula, maybe it's what is used in platen rubber rollers during manufacture.
I would guess that there is no Xylene ((CH3)2C6H4), or it would have been mentioned.
I did not find out who is making this stuff, and it may be a one-man operation.
Joe Gwinn
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Joe Gwinn
I may have identified the C8H8O3 compound. Wintergreen Oil fits the bill.
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Method 3
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I'm betting that the rubber restorer is one guy who read the WikiHow article.
Joe Gwinn
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Lizard Cheney
I suspect Barry's original certificate was printed in Kenya.
Obammy's fake certificate was printed on some Deep State laser printer.
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Carlos E.R.
I probably have read that long ago.
Hum. Is this an USA thing? I think the EU privacy laws should make this illegal in the EU.
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Jeff Liebermann
I found very little on the topic for UK or EU printers:
"EU: Printer Tracking Dots May Violate Human Rights" (Feb 18, 2008)