Minolta 1250W white line defect

[Mike S.]

My wife's 1250W, with a several months' old toner cartridge, has started
to "miss" putting down toner over a tiny (few pixels) vertical strip. So
if you print a black page, there is a thin white line running down from
top to bottom.

At first I feared the drum was damaged (which, in this case, would mean
the cheap thing to do would be to replace the printer). However, I found
no damage on the drum unit.

However, looking at the toner cartridge - specifically at the roller that
appears to transfer toner from the cartridge to the drum - there is an
obvious band where no toner is present, in the suspicious location.

I tried shaking the cartridge to redistribute toner. No change. Tried
manually turning the gear in both directions. In one direction, the defect
gets worse and several others appear along the length of the roller. In
the other direction, no change.

I suspect this cartridge will be replaced soon, anyway; but just for
information: is there a known cause for this (I suspect some foreign
matter somewhere) and a quick remedy that is not so complicated or messy
that it would make me regret trying?

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Your diagnosis is probably correct. There is an edge that keeps the
toner distribution even, and sometimes either a hard clump of toner, or
more often a piece of paper or some accumulated dust and paper fuzz gets
caught between that fixed edge and the roller.

Sometimes you can fix this by taking a business card, and gently
introducing it between the roller and that internal edge and run the
card along the length of the cartridge, and it may dislodge the cause,
although sometimes it just gets moved over to another location.

Art