General > General Technical Chat

Color Laser Printer WIFI (Although I'm old!)

<< < (12/14) > >>

IDEngineer:

--- Quote from: jfiresto on April 01, 2020, 10:38:07 am ---Are you sure it was not (not so) prolonged light pollution?
--- End quote ---
That was my first thought too. There's a reason many (most? all?) toner cartridges that have an integral drum are shipped in black plastic bags.

GlennSprigg:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on April 01, 2020, 07:32:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: jfiresto on April 01, 2020, 10:38:07 am ---Are you sure it was not (not so) prolonged light pollution?
--- End quote ---
That was my first thought too. There's a reason many (most? all?) toner cartridges that have an integral drum are shipped in black plastic bags.

--- End quote ---

He said the m/c was in a 'cupboard', and the drum would be hidden inside the m/c. Can't see light being a problem.
I'd be more curious about how it now printed, with regards to quality??

tooki:

--- Quote from: jfiresto on April 01, 2020, 10:38:07 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on April 01, 2020, 10:23:42 am ---... I pulled out the small B&W laser (also a classifieds freebie) that I have for PCB making, only to discover that in the probably 2-3 years it was sitting in the cupboard, the imaging drum has gone bad — it has a horizontal stripe across the drum, presumably from the prolonged contact with another roller....
--- End quote ---

Are you sure it was not (not so) prolonged light pollution?

--- End quote ---
Definitely sure it wasn’t. The printer was in a closed cardboard box, and the cartridge was inside the printer. No way for light to get in. Before going into the box, it worked flawlessly.

The damage to the drum is mechanical: it’s a roughened (textured) line about 1.5mm thick. So it’s not just desensitization of the photosensitive coating.

(It’s a moot point anyway at this point: the printer subsequently decided to commit suicide by wrapping an A5 sheet of toner transfer paper around the fuser drum, and the rotations ironed it down nice and tight. No idea why it choked on the A5, since that is a supported paper size, and it had no trouble with the A4 sheets of transfer paper. In the process of removing that mess, I caused a few scratches to the fuser drum’s Teflon coating. On paper, that just causes very minor flaws, but on toner transfer paper, where toner adhesion is deliberately weak, it tears off chunks of toner. :/ Luckily this thing was a freebie I didn’t pay one cent for!)

tooki:

--- Quote from: GlennSprigg on April 02, 2020, 10:30:23 am ---
--- Quote from: IDEngineer on April 01, 2020, 07:32:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: jfiresto on April 01, 2020, 10:38:07 am ---Are you sure it was not (not so) prolonged light pollution?
--- End quote ---
That was my first thought too. There's a reason many (most? all?) toner cartridges that have an integral drum are shipped in black plastic bags.

--- End quote ---

He said the m/c was in a 'cupboard', and the drum would be hidden inside the m/c. Can't see light being a problem.
I'd be more curious about how it now printed, with regards to quality??

--- End quote ---
Other than the banding due to the imaging drum damage (and prior to the fuser drum damage), the print quality was absolutely flawless. The PCBs I made (using the band-free center portion of the image, which was just wide enough for my circuit) came out very well, with sharply defined edges. (Only the center fill of broad traces could have used a bit more toner, even with the highest density setting.)

I suppose it helps that I have a really good laminator. It cost me $1 on the local auction site, but apparently would have cost over $400 when it was new. A few passes thought it on high heat (with the PCB and transfer sheet sandwiched in a folded sheet of plain paper) and done. This was actually the first time I’ve done toner transfer, and it worked better than I’d hoped for, the printer issues notwithstanding.

SeanB:

--- Quote from: tooki on April 01, 2020, 10:35:39 am ---Addendum to my prior reply to you:

The reason the wax-inkjet Phaser printers were so fast was that they had page-width printheads (one for each color, of course), so it took merely one pass of the transfer belt under the heads to create the image, and then one swift transfer to the paper while ejecting. Pairing that with the fast CPUs they put inside those things is what let them have the superb print speeds.

Anyway. while wax inkjet is now gone, page-width aqueous inkjet now exists. HP sells it as their “PageWide” printers. I’ve not had a chance to try one yet, but if their specs are to be believed, they’ve got outstanding print speeds, with the same low time-to-first-page times as a prewarmed wax Phaser. And the ink for them is cheap. (As in, the cartridges cost a bit, but they’re enormous. AFAIK these have some of the lowest page costs of any desktop/office printers in existence.) Like the wax Phasers, they’re sold as small-workgroup office printers. What I have no idea about is their resilience to sporadic use. I know HP uses a lot of technologies to prevent and clear clogs (like back suction to reverse clogs back out, instead of trying to force them out forward like previous ones), but I just have no practical experience with these.

As for print quality, they wouldn’t be my first choice for photos, as even their maximum resolution (1200x1200dpi) isn’t that high. But I have seen the output from them, and it’s great for business graphics, text, and other everyday documents.

--- End quote ---

Phasor printers do have a page width print head, but it makes up an image on the heated transfer drum from multiple rotations of the drum, stepping the head over a pixel width at a time to build up the full page image, then it transfers the hot wax film image from the oil layer onto the paper in a single rotation. There are around 50 IIRC of each colour wax jets, each with it's own channel for hot wax in the main casting, and each with it's own piezo actuator to pump out a droplet of hot wax onto the drum surface as it passes by, just clearing the head. go through the menu structure and get to the test print, and it will make a set of 4 colour bars down the page, each corresponding to a print head output.

Not cheap to run though, as they use around a half stick of the wax ( black still free right) per colur during start up, as the heads are heated up, the vacuum head is pulled over the nozzle area, and the pump runs to pull hot wax through the head multiple times, to clear any air bubbles out of the wax passages. Then the wax is deposited into the maintenance tray as a black blob. then the maintenance tray is lifted up so the wiper pad can clean the drum surface, then it applies the oil film needed to float the image before transferring to the paper as it passes through.

They suck with transparencies, smearing them, but work well on any card or paper stock you run through them, as the paper path is nearly straight. they also are exactly the same cost per page, so I almost always would print anything as white or coloured images on a solid black (at least to the page borders) background.

Still got one in the garage, but as the wax blocks were over $100 per colour, for 3 blocks, or a month's supply in standby, I have not powered it for a decade. Got plenty of black though, I have been using them as candles, just stick a hole in the middle, and put in a wick.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod