Entries Tagged 'Printers' ↓

Author: Jason Sprague

With most printers, over 50% of all problems are customer fixable. This guide was created to help bail you out when you get stuck on tough printing problems. NOTE: If you need specific information or help with a particular printer, please contact the printer manufacturer.

You troubleshoot printing issues like you would any other computer/network related problem. You start at a general point and rule out the possibilities until you have the specific cause. The first question that you need to answer is: “Is the problem hardware, software, network or performance related?”.

Hardware: First make sure that the printer is on and that it is in “ready” position. Make sure that there are no error messages on the LEDs or LCD if applicable. Now complete the following steps:

1. Any printer worth owning, can print an internal test or configuration page. This is absolutely the first thing that you want to do, even if you think that the hardware is not the issue. Make sure that the page will print and it looks good. If it prints go to step 3 - If it won’t print, go to step 2.
2. Test page didn’t print? Any error messages? Try cycling power on the printer and try again. If it still doesn’t print, many printers have a special reset often referred to as an NVRAM reset. NVRAM stands for Non-volitile RAM and is where a printer may store a variety of information including network settings, ripped print jobs and more. Sometimes a piece of corrupted information from a bad print job can “confuse” a printer and cause it to hang. Sometimes an NVRAM reset will flush this bad information and restore the printer. It may also wipe all of your network/printer settings so you should contact the printer manufacturer before doing this. If this procedure doesn’t fix the problem, then call for service.
3. Your test page printed? Good! Take a good look at it and see if there are any print quality problems(i.e. spots, streaks, etc). If the test page looks fine, then you are probably dealing with a network or software problem. If there are visible problems, then keep reading. Before doing anything else, consult your manufacturers documentation for a list of recommended cleaning procedures before moving to the next step. Almost all printers have “consumable items” or CRCs. These are parts of the printer that are customer replaceable and have a lifespan, which means that they aren’t intended to last forever. On a laser printer these may include a fuser, photo-receptor, scorotron charger, toner cartridges and more. It is a good idea to keep spares of these parts on hand for troubleshooting reasons. You can save a lot of time and headache waiting for a technician, by swapping these parts one at a time and seeing if it cures the problem. Make sure that you run about 20 test pages after inserting a new CRC and see if there is improvement. Sometimes hardware failures can leave messes that have to be “mopped up” with quite a few test pages. If these steps do not cure the problem, then contact the manufacturer for further assistance.

Network: When troubleshooting networking problems with printers, you will typically follow the same lines of reasoning that you would troubleshooting a PC networking issue especially with newer models of printers. The very first thing to do is narrow down the scope the problem. Is it only an issue for 1 PC, multiple PCs or all of them. Once you have answered this question, the following steps should get you on your way.

ISSUE IS AFFECTING 1 OR SOME PCs:

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Author: Barry Shultz

Laser cartridges are much more sophisticated than inkjet cartridges. They have many moving parts but they all have some things in common. Laser cartridges do not use ink, they use toner. Toner is a dry black powdery substance with the consistency of baking flour.

All laser cartridges consist of a drum, toner, corona wires and cleaning blades among other parts that include gears and other moving objects. The only similarity that they have to inkjet cartridges is the fact that you can refill them. You will not get as many refills from a laser cartridge because there are other parts that will eventually wear out that most people will not be able to replace without some technical skills. Expect about three refills on average from a laser cartridge.

Refilling a laser cartridge is not that difficult. First you need to gain access to the toner hopper. You can do this by either dis-assembling the cartridge or by using a tool to burn a hole into the cartridge right into the toner hopper. You re-fill the hopper with the proper amount of toner and re-assemble it or seal the fill hole. This is a rather simplistic explanation because there are so many different styles of laser cartridges and each one will have it’s own procedure.

The way laser cartridges work is very ingenious. A photosensitive substrate is coated onto a cylinder or drum. The drum is charged evenly with electricity by the corona wire or corona strip. When the laser in the printer shines on the drum the electrical current at that particular area will be dissipated leaving a latent image or an invisible image made up entirely of electricity.

When the drum, with it’s latent image, rotates to the toner area, it attracts toner to the drum only where the latent electrical image is. In other words the toner is attracted to the electricity that’s left on the drum in the form of the latent image I just discussed. At this point there is a visible image on the drum made up of toner. When the drum rotates further the toner is transferred to the paper that is now passing through the printer. The toner is pulled off the drum by another corona strip or wire that has a higher voltage than the drum thus releasing the toner onto the paper. This corona is below the paper so the paper is passing between the corona and the drum. If you removed the paper from the printer at this point you would be able to see the image on the paper, but don’t sneeze because you could blow the image right off the paper. After the image is transferred to the paper it must then pass through the fixing or fuser rollers where a combination of heat and pressure permanently bonds the toner onto the paper.

Sometimes toner gets on the coronas which can cause black or white streaks. Some laser cartridges come equipped with corona cleaners. Other parts that can go bad are the cleaning blade that cleans the drum or the drum itself can wear out. Replacing these parts goes way beyond this article.

Mostly, laser cartridges just run out of toner and the other parts are fine. The prices of some laser cartridges can go well over $100.00 so a few refills can really save you a bundle of money.

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com

Author: Barry Shultz

Here are a few facts about inkjet cartridges:

* Over 375,000,000 Empty Inkjet Cartridges Dumped Each Year. * Statistics reveal that only 5% of all empty inkjet cartridges are currently being recycled. * E-mail has increased the amount of paper used in offices by almost 40%. * Plastics used in inkjet cartridges can take over 10 centuries (1000 years!) to decompose * 90ml of oil is used to produce each inkjet cartridge. * In the last six months alone, inkjet cartridge recycling has saved more than 50 million liters of oil. This is more oil than what was tragically spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. * Empty inkjet cartridges are THE most valuable post-consumer item. (http://www.empty-inkjet-cartridges.com)

There are lots of companies on the internet that will buy your empty inkjet cartridges. This is an excellent opportunity for raising fund money for any organization from Boy Scouts to baseball teams or to just put a few bucks back in your pocket. This is not chump change either. Some companies are paying $6.50 and more for one cartridge. Collect a bunch of these and you can make some serious money. Laser cartridges can fetch up to $25 each

Most of the companies that will buy your empty cartridges will also pay for any postage charges that you incur.

Inkjet brokers just can’t get enough cartridges fast enough to supply the many recyclers that are starting up. They have to rely on people like you and me to keep them supplied.

Now keep in mind that they do not buy just any cartridge. They are mostly interested in those cartridges that contain print heads, like HP, Lexmark, Dell, Some Canon, Apple, Some Brother, Sharp and older Xerox cartridges.

The reason is because cartridges that are just ink tanks, i.e. the print head is permanently mounted in the printer, are cheap for the generic market to reproduce. So there is no profit in commercially refilling them.

Also, in order to keep the highest quality, they are mostly interested in virgin cartridges, those that have never been refilled. You may find some companies buying once refilled cartridges but at a substantially lower price. Many will just tell you up front that they must be virgin cartridges.

These empty cartridge buyers are easy to find. Just do a Google search something like this, “we buy empty inkjet cartridges”. I got over 95,000 results with that search.

This company will supply everything you need for fundraisers. http://www.inkbank.com

Here are some others that will buy your cartridges:

http://www.cartridgesareus.com http://www.webuyempties.com http://www.tonerbuyer.com http://www.fundraisingweb.org/listings/recycles.htm

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com

Author: Barry Shultz

My printer just died. My Epson C60 that I’ve had for almost 2 years was my buddy. I loved that printer. It was there for me through thick and thin. Sure it had it’s quirks and idiosyncrasies like not printing when my office temperature dropped to 17 degrees because I forgot to turn the thermostat up one bitterly cold morning. I had to open the lid and point a ceramic space heater inside to thaw it out.

There were times that it drove me crazy. Sometimes when I asked it to print something for me it would sit there and clean itself for what seemed like an eternity. Whirr - click- pop - pop - whirr - click etc, etc, etc. I could pull my hair out sometimes. Why does it always do that when I’m in a hurry?

My old Epson and me became pretty good friends though. It always treated me good with sharp, detailed prints. I never had to worry about going broke with ink cartridges because the generics I used in her were really cheap and since I bought them from myself I got the VIP discount.  :-)  

But that’s the way it goes with inkjet printers. They are kinda like dogs. You know they have a short life span and you know that once you get one you’ll fall in love with it. And when the time comes to have to part your ways it’s a difficult and emotional experience. Yes, it’s painful and I’m sure I’ll get through it somehow but I can’t stop thinking of all the fond memories that I have collected throughout the years. It’s like loosing a part of me.

Ok, time to snap out of it and get a new printer. It was a daunting task to pick out a new printer. I noticed that there must be 30 new models come out this month. Holy cow, this is going to take some time. I think I like the Epson R300M because it has that monitor thingy. Rats, it’s discontinued. Already??? I just saw an advertisement for it. Oh well, I guess I’ll go with the R320, that has a nifty little color monitor too.

The first thing I better do is go to atlascopy.com and see if they carry the cartridges, bulk ink and refilling stuff for my new printer. Oh, and I can’t forget to email myself and ask if my old ink will work with this new printer. Darn, I don’t see my new printer listed on the web site. Why don’t they keep their site up to date?

Finally got an answer back from myself. Seems that they have all my stuff but I didn’t think to look for cartridge numbers instead of printer models. I really think they should get on the ball and list all those new printers when they come out every day. What would it take, two, three hours a day? You can’t tell me they are that busy!

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com

Author: Barry Shultz

Article: Ever thought about putting your refilling talent to work for you? I’m not talking about starting an inkjet refilling business, however, there’s nothing stopping you from doing that. What I mean is if you enjoy refilling inkjet cartridges there are ways that you can sell them and make some money without a whole lot of effort.

Many people think that a refilling business is the type that people bring you their cartridges, you refill them, and they pay you and leave. That’s the hard way to do it. A much easier way is to obtain empty cartridges, refill them and sell them. The trick is where to get the empties so you don’t go broke in the process. Another thing to realize is you only want to refill cartridges that have print heads on them. Most HP and Lexmark cartridges fall into that category. Most Canons and all Epson’s won’t.

The easiest place to sell your cartridges is on eBay. You can also sell them to your friends, neighbors and work associates. If you sell them on eBay you could include in your ad that you buy empties. Offer $1.00 per empty and stipulate that they must be virgin cartridges, never before refilled. Another place to get your empties is empties.com. You can also make up some fliers and pass them out to local business’ offering to buy their empty cartridges. So many companies throw them away and would gladly sell them to you cheap.

You don’t need a lot of expensive tools to get started. A couple refill kits will pay for themselves rather quickly. If you specialize in a few types of cartridges you won’t have to buy a lot of supplies. Popular cartridges like HP C6578 and HP 51645A, HP 6656, HP 6657, Lexmark 12A1970 and 12A1980, 10N0016 and 10N0026.

You will also need boxes and cartridge clips or just use print head sealing tape. These are pretty cheap and you can find them on the internet.

If you have a printer that fits a popular cartridge you can use it to test your cartridges before selling them. You can buy printers on eBay for pennies on the dollar for testing machines. Don’t forget the other auctions like Yahoo, Ubid and Amazon for buying printers. Actually you might get a better deal buying a printer on the smaller auctions.

Price your cartridges about 25% below retail or use the prices from our web site. There’s plenty of business to go around so what are you waiting for?

There’s not enough room here to go into complete detail but if you want more information take a look at Matt Eve’s book on starting a refilling business: http://atlascopy.com/cartridge-refilling-business.htm

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com

Author: Barry Shultz

Article: Many years ago when I was a copier technician my boss would always tell us to push our companies supplies, paper, toner etc.. Of course they wanted to sell more supplies and make more money but their techniques were very questionable. Just like printers you could go out and purchase generic supplies and some worked better than others naturally. Well the supplies that we sold were also mostly generic, however, they were branded with our companies name and logos. Here’s where the sneakiness comes in. When a customer complained about a repair cost estimate we were told to blame it on their inferior generic supplies and to further that the repair would have been much cheaper if they were using our over-priced supplies.

I explained this to many customers on many occasions while desperately trying to suppress my rage at being forced to hand this BS to unknowing customers while I knew full well that what I was telling them was absolutely untrue. I knew at the time that the generic supplies my customers were using had nothing to do with the expensive repair costs but you know what? They all bought the idea, almost every customer that I explained this to started buying all their supplies from us. BECAUSE, I was an authority figure and a perceived expert in my field.

This scenario lends itself fabulously to the printer market. Threats from the manufacturers, the perceived experts, that your printer will suffer an untimely death if you use generic supplies or refill your cartridges. There’s no truth to this at all. The printer manufacturers want to sell you their over-priced supplies and they will lie to you to get your business.

Here is how you can have some fun with your printer manufacturers technical representative. Call their help line and tell them you are having trouble refilling one of their cartridges and ask them for some help because it’s not working. Don’t expect a warm response. You can expect the same response if you called your car dealership complaining that your car won’t start after filling the gas tank with water! The technicians are trained to drill you to find out if you are using generic supplies or refilling your cartridges. Then if they discover that you are whatever problem that you are experiencing will be blamed on the supplies. So you see, weather you are refilling or not, using generic supplies or not, never, EVER, admit this to them or the support stops immediately.

If you are having problems most manufacturers will simply send you another printer as long as your warranty is still good, UNLESS it is discovered that you are using generic or refilled cartridges. Printers break down, that’s life. But permanent mechanical malfunctions are rarely caused by bad cartridges. If the cartridge is at fault simply replacing the cartridge will fix the problem 99% of the time. An exception might be if a cartridge severely leaked inside the printer, but I’ve seen OEM’s do this too.

Never send a printer back with the cartridges left inside. They will usually tell you to do this anyhow but it’s also good insurance in case you left some generic or refilled cartridges in the printer. Don’t give them any ammunition to use against you.

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com

Author: Barry Shultz

Article: There is a lot of confusion when it comes to using print head sealing tape. When you refill a cartridge that contains a print head, Lexmark and HP in particular, you need to seal the print head to #1 protect it and #2 keep it from drying out. The combination of sealing tape and a cartridge clip can’t be beat for sealing cartridges for storage or transport.

Print head sealing tape comes in two varieties, adhesive and static. Both serve a different purpose which I will get into very shortly. There are two colors available, blue and orange. The orange tape is used on Canon cartridges mostly and is of the adhesive variety. The blue tape is used on HP and Lexmark cartridges and is available in static or adhesive.

The reason the orange tape is only available in adhesive form is because Canon cartridges don’t have print heads on them which can be damaged with an adhesive type of tape. The orange tape can be used to seal the ink ports and refilling and breather holes on the BCI-3e and BCI-6 Canon cartridges.

The blue tape deserves more discussion because using the wrong tape can permanently ruin your cartridge. Do not use the adhesive tape on color print heads, ever. It is used to seal the breather holes for storage. The adhesive tape can actually cause the copper foil to disconnect from the cartridge when you remove it, which is of course a bad thing.

Use the static tape on print heads. It has no adhesive and it needs to be applied properly. Many people do not know how to properly apply static print head sealing tape. The trick is to heat up the print head before applying the tape. Get yourself a hair dryer and heat up the print head. Then take a strip of static tape and position it properly and while the print head is warm simply dab your finger on the tape over the print head. The slight pressure will bond the tape to the print head and hold it in place. The heat temporarily expands the tape so when it cools off it will shrink slightly and form a bond around the print head. Add a cartridge clip and you have the best known method for storing cartridges with print heads.

A note of caution here. Some of you will be tempted to use a heat gun. A Heat gun can throw off an amazing amount of heat, probably enough to destroy the print head. If you don’t have experience using a heat gun in this fashion please use a hair dryer.

Even if you don’t refill a lot you might want to keep a roll of print head tape on hand. Sealing a color cartridge improperly can cause cross chamber migration of ink and that is a contamination that you definitely do not want to deal with.

About the author: Barry Shultz is the author of Atlascopy News, and President of Atlascopy, Inc. Atlascopy specialized in affordable alternatives to the high cost of printer supplies. Sign up for the Atlascopy Newsletter and get 10% coupons every week in your email. http://atlascopy.com/signup_new.htm Go to Atlascopy to save a bundle on your printer and refilling supplies. http://atlascopy.com