Vertical smudge on page with Canon laser printer (only when printingfrom black cart)

[myfathersson]

I have a few smudges on the page, all along a vertical line about a third of the way into the page

It doesnt always happen but sometimes there are 2-3 of them on a page. Thesmudges tear off to the right a bit and sometimes they are quite small andjust manifest as wrongly formed characters.

Canon have said firstly that this results from bad communication between the computer and the printer, and that I should stop using a USB hub, but that didnt fix it. I may have lessened it slghtly.

Then they said it must be the cartridge. But changing it didnt seem to make the problem significantly better. It did a bit, though.

Does anyone have any idea what this might be please? Do I just go out and buy enough cartridges until I find one that doesnt do it at all? I have already spent more than the printer is worth buying new colour cartridges recently and now the Yellow one has completely stopped the whole printer from working, even in black! I am wondering if I should bother buying a yellow cartridge if this problem isnt going to go away or is caused by some irreparable circuit or the drum or something (I recently replaced that as well!)

 

[myfathersson]

Sorry I should have menioned: This is a colour one, an Imageclass 8180C and there is no smudging in colour. Does this mean that the drum must be OK?

I also dont think there is much smudging in test mode, though most of that is colour so i am not sure

 

[myfathersson]

No, things arent that easy, though the regularity (lots of them do seem to be on the same position on each page) does suggest some problem with a roller? The marks are at 22mm intervals and not at every 22mm position. Towards the bottom of the page, the printer sometimes has even more difficulty;

The marks are all 30mm into the printed part of the page from the left (meaning assuming an inch and a half unused margin). but at the bottom There is a smudge at the 30mm position in and one about 10mm further over to the right on the same line.

 

[myfathersson]

OK I managed to put in on picturepush, where it can be seen at

It was quite difficult to get my scanner to resolve the smudges. They didntcome out in black at all, nor in colour until i jacked up the DPI to 400. Now they can be seen, though they look worse than in the original in that the original only has a few of these. The pic seems to show more of them ina line going down the page at AROUND the positioning I mentioned

[Please let me know if this pic is clear enough]

 

[myfathersson]

Let me see what I can find: The problem is that the printer has been givingsuspect Y cart error messages for about 4 months and now it says REPLACE YCART so wont print even in black alone. WHen i take out the Y cart, thereis Y toner all over the roller area and a bit on the wheels so I know thecart is completely dead

So I cant easily get another print out of a page of text unless someone cantell me how to override the cant print colour error message!

 

[Yianni]

Let me see what I can find: The problem is that the printer has been
giving
suspect Y cart error messages for about 4 months and now it says REPLACE Y
CART
so wont print even in black alone. WHen i take out the Y cart, there is Y
toner all over the roller area and a bit on the wheels so I know the cart
is
completely dead

The best bet is a service manual, I have literally hundreds of them but
not for
this model. In fact obtaining Canon printer manuals has alway been
difficult. I
cannot find one for this model anywhere on-line either to buy or free.
The service manual would provide important information like whether you
can
bypass the cartridge empty message or not and it should contain a
repetitive
defect ruler which helps to diagnose problems like the ones you are
experiencing.
If you have the original page that you scanned and can scan it at a much
higher
definition then that may help.
Sometimes there are patterns that repeat down the page (rather than one
distinct image that repeats) in that case it is the vertical distance
between
the start of identical patterns that matters, not between different
defects.
Tony

Hello Tony,

I think, myfathersson, means the smudges in the marked vertical area.

I would think the fuser, or may the laser lenses. I'm also interested to
know the cause of the problem.

 

[Yianni]

Direct link to the image:
http://www4.picturepush.com/photo/a/12117732/img/12117732.jpg

 

[myfathersson]

Thanks for that Yianni, your posting makes things clearer for me as well!!

I couldnt see the problem all that easily on the photo and said that it wasnt particularly clear on my posted photo but on your annotated version, when I click to magnify by a factor of about ten or twenty, smudges start to appear all down the vertical line on the page, with the emphasis being only slightly marked at the 22mm marks.

I have thrown away the yellow cart and a new one is arriving in a day or so.. So presumably I can clean the lens if I can find it. Finding the fuser and cleaning that may well be slightly more of a problem.

I don't want to introduce any new concepts but I wonder if it can be relevant that since a short while before the problem started, the printer has been emitting curious whistling noises, as if something needs oiling. Is there any lubrication to anything inside this unit please? When it started, I took out all carts and the drum and there was quite a lot of toner of all colours (except black??) all over the lower part of the unit.Probably not all that much more than should be expected for a unit 4-5 years old which hasnever been cleaned. I cleaned a lot of it off, being careful not to spreadwhile cleaning.

 

[myfathersson]

There is no lubrication required on any modern laser printer. Rarely, a scanner
motor will fail causing a squealing moise which gets worse until finally it
fails with an error message but I doubt that is it. The noise could be one of
the cartridges and that is probably nothing to be concerned about. If the
problem does turn out to be the fuser they are extremely difficult to clean and
very easy to damage. Cleaning them usually requires a special toner cleaning
solution and very gentle and patient application. Hopefully installing the new
yellow toner will provide more information.
Tony

Well the 'new' cartridge has arrived and the printer has moved from
CHANGE K CART back to to CHECK K CART! Interestingly the yellow
covering to the roller wasn't perfectly even? I am wondering whether
this is something which ill iron itself out. The cartridge arrived
open and with no pull-out strip though the orange plastic cover
looked undisturbed.

I couldn't find the lens to clean for the laser: It doesn't seem to be
under or anywhere near the drum but I suppose it has to be and must be
under some cover. The printer now works again and the line of smudges
is (in initial testing) even more marked than before. As it only
happens on black, I suppose I can assume it must be something to do
with the black cartridge or isn't it that easy?

(I should add that all of my last 4-5 black cartridges have been re-
manufactured. The yellow one is Canon, although the chip is black
rather than green:Or are all Canon Y chips black?)

 

[Yianni]

Check K Cart means it is getting low. As mentioned earlier I don't know
this
printer but normally there would be a pull-out strip in a new cartridge
direct
from the manufacturer.
The laser lens may well be under a cover, one that is moved out of the way
when
the drum unit is installed, there is usually a little catch that can be
defeated with a screwdriver or similar.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that a new K cartridge may fix the
problem
since the printer indicates the K toner is getting low. Canon chip colours
vary
from model to model so far as I am aware.
Maybe the time has come to buy a Canon K cartridge? I am not opposed to
remanufactured carts but sometimes the OEM cart is a good way to prove a
point.
Tony

Now I understand which printer is. The cartridges are these
http://www.surplustoner.com/sage/images/items/238424.jpg .
Engine: Minolta 1600. Same with Minolta 2400, 2500. Type carousel, which
spreads toner in all over the inside of the printer. So, most possible there
is toner onto the laser cover.

Remove all toners, then remove the drum, imaging unit, photo conductor or
whatever Canon names it. Clean the printer from the toner. Most possible you
would solve the problem. I don't know where the laser cover is. If you wish,
use a very light torch or something similar and search for a small
semitransparent plastic, usually about 10x3 cm (4x1 inch). In normal light
it seems not transparent.

 

[Yianni]

The printer now works again and the line of smudges

is (in initial testing) even more marked than before. As it only
happens on black, I suppose I can assume it must be something to do
with the black cartridge or isn't it that easy?

What about the printer? Have you found anything?

 

[myfathersson]

What about the printer? Have you found anything?

What about the printer? Have you found anything?

I know it has been a while but this printer really IS erratic. It has been working reasonably well but I haven't trusted it. It can do single pages and even multiple pages. It seemed to be working but today and for no apparent reason, while I was printing a 24 page document, suddenly it stopped at about page 20 and had a long think about what it was doing. Then it printed the rest. But when I came to check those last pages, annoyingly an old problem reared it ugly head. Page 21 printed the top left third and mysteriously got a blue color wrong, printing it in pink.

THAT printing the top left third of the page was a problem I had had a yearor so ago and no one at Canon seemed to be able to pin it down. Then suddenly one of their tech support people said that this was a classic known software problem arising out of using a USB hub between the printer and the computer. Never mind the fact that the hub had been working for years with no problems. Suddenly this printer will only work if I plug the printer straight into the computer. And there we lay until the smudge problem started. Now as far as I can see, the smudge problem has gone away and this printingonly the left side of the page has come back!