Brother HL-2280DW Length wise fading

[hpmaxim]

I have a Brother HL-2280DW that ran out of the starter tone.  I installed an aftermarket/generic replacement unit which worked fine for a little while (I got it from Meritline, it had good reviews), but then found that there are faded regions running the 11" length of the paper.  It's not a stripe, but rather a 1-1.5" wide band where the fading is not consistent through the band.  Last print I made there were two bands, one on the left-ish side of the page, and one on the right-ish side.  I don't think the exact location of the bands is completely consistent from one print to the next, but they are approximately consistent.

Any thoughts on what's wrong and how to fix it?  I have tried pulling the toner out and shaking it, and moving the green tab (corona wire) back and forth a bunch of times, but neither made a difference.

[Cyberdragon]

https://mindmachine.co.uk/products/01_Printer_Gen_Faults_Fade_Margin1.html

[wasyoungonce]

I have HL-2270DW...its different but uses same toner cartridge etc...so I suspect not much has changed.  These use a variable corona wire, you can see it when you slip the toner into its carrier drum.   This needs occasional wiping.  The variable corona is used because these systems return unused toner into the cartridge this you have a mixture of used and new toner, which needs a variable static attraction charge...variable corona.  A dusty or oxidised corona wire can cause print issue.

Also take out your toner shake it side to side and refit, try again.  If its still bad....look refill your toner yourself.   I've used generic cartridges but none were any good.  Refill with fresh toner was the best...as good as OEM.  Plenty of info on the internet...costs ~ $8 per cartridge, oh and you may need a flag gear kit as this tells it how much toner used (cost ~$10).   Just a caveat on this.... I did read OS cartridges use a LED sensor for toner...but this was probably wrong for TN450.

[hpmaxim]

I did try shaking the toner cartridge, it made no difference.  I also tried printing the test page with both cartridges (new one, and the starter cartridge) -- printer is showing about 926 sheets printed by the way:

Starter Cartridge:


Replacement Cartridge:


I'm thinking the replacement cartridge might just be a bum unit.

[kripton2035]

compatible cartridges are for me synonym of lottery ... any brand concerned ...

[hpmaxim]

So, that black stripe was apparently my fault: the tab thingy used to clean the corona wire was not all the way over in the correct position.  So that leaves it pretty blatantly obvious the problem is the toner cartridge considering the "clean" sheet is a highly used starter cartridge.  Now to figure out where to get a toner cartridge that works.  Is the "lottery" aspect one unit to the next, or one manufacturer to the next?  Is a "remanufactured" cartridge (a regular Brother cartridge that has been refilled) more reliable than a generic manufactured one?  How reliable is refilling the starter cartridge?

[wasyoungonce]

HPmaxim...refill yourself....!  Very cheap, easy and my print quality is great!  I have 2 carts, one in use one filled ready to go.  All you need is the starter cart/toner and a flag gear kit.   Buy another OEM and do the same with this.  No flag gear kit needed for std carts.

I had "issues" with replacement non-OEM carts.  Print quality was all over the place.

[hpmaxim]

I did print another page test page (on the new cartridge) it looked the same as as first one, but with no stripe.  I will say that the page printed with the starter cartridge did not look as good in person as it did in the picture.  The right side boxes (on the top of the page) were lighter than the left side boxes, there were faded lines (very thin) in the image that didn't show up in the photo, although you can see that its darker on the left than the right.

The cartridge has between 250 and 450 pages on it (total count was at 922, but I bet I didn't change the cartridge until 600).  Unfortunately, it was bought in June 2013, so its pretty old.  I've contacted Meritline and asked if they would do the right thing by me.  We'll see what they say.