Dell C1760nw printer fixed

[james_s]

I was given this printer recently, a nice little color LED page printer that prints exceptionally nice output despite having been inexpensive. It worked except printing a full page caused the edges to not fuse properly making a gummed up mess. I thought the fuser sleeve was damaged but after ignoring the "don't take this apart" graphic and completely disassembling the fuser it turned out to use a conventional lamp heated roller which was in good shape. The sleeve was on the pressure roller and after scraping off the melted toner it turned out to be fine. Closely inspecting things I noticed that the two thermistors that monitor the roller temperature were both coated in blobs of melted toner so I carefully scraped those clean. I reassembled the fuser and put it back in the printer and was pleased to find that it now works perfectly. I can print a full page color photo and the entire sheet is fused flawlessly from edge to edge, I can no longer rub the toner off with my finger.

I noticed the fuser for this popular and recently discontinued printer is out of stock everywhere so I suspect this is a fairly common problem. I bet tens of thousands of these printers have ended up in landfills due to a little gunk built up on a temperature sensor.

[Gyro]

Worth knowing, thanks.  I've got one too, nice printer and cheap toner availability.

[GreyWoolfe]

I saw that years ago on a Dell multifunction device.  I friend was using it for her business.  She bought a new printer and gave it to me to see if I could salvage it.  On this one, the fuser flat failed. As you found out, there are basically no parts available for them.  I would never buy/own/accept for free a Dell printer.  I simply can't be bothered.

[james_s]

Well it was free, it was easy to fix, it does a superb job of printing, and consumables are cheap, no complaints here. It has about 7700 pages on it and was used as the main printer in a business for about 6 years. Yes it sucks no parts are available but these low cost printers are all that way, they're designed as light duty consumer devices.

I've recycled higher end printers that were designed to be serviceable, parts were available but a full set of consumables costs more than a whole new printer so it hardly matters. I'm not about to pay $200 for a drum for a printer I couldn't sell for $100 when a color Laserjet office printer is only ~$300 brand new.