Laser printers are complex output devices. In this video, you’ll learn how to maintain a laser printer, including toner cartridge replacement, maintenance kit installation, printer calibration, and cleaning.
A laser printer is an amazing piece of technology. Take some high voltage, combine it with some charged ions, and melt some powdered toner on top of a sheet of paper. Press it all together, and you get some amazing output from these laser printers.
You can also print very quickly with these laser printers, making them a high-capacity output device. One challenge with laser printers, however, is they are relatively complex with a lot of different moving parts inside of the device. You also need enough memory and CPU inside of one of these devices to be able to render the page for the final output. And if this toner somehow finds its way outside of the toner cartridge, you may have to clean up quite a mess inside of your laser printer.
When we mention the laser printer’s relatively complex, this is what we’re referring to. There are many different parts that make up the entire process for printing a single page on a laser printer. Everything in the laser printer focuses on getting information from the memory of this device onto a photosensitive drum that then transfers that image to a piece of paper.
We start by charging this drum with a negative charge. This is done through a wire known as a corona wire, or it may be a roller that has a negative charge itself. Once you have this negative charge, the laser writes the image of what you need to print onto the outside of this photosensitive drum. Every place the laser touches gets rid of the negative charge.
You then add to this photosensitive drum a negatively charged set of toner, which is going to stick to all of the places that the laser has touched. Since the rest of the drum is negatively charged, and the toner is also negatively charged, those two will not stick to each other.
A piece of paper is then passed next to the photosensitive drum, and all of that toner on the drum is transferred to the paper. Then the paper goes through a fuser that uses heat and pressure to permanently affix that toner to the page. Any toner that may still be stuck to the photosensitive drum is cleaned off, and the process starts again.
As you can tell by that diagram, the toner is important for taking the image and memory in that printer and getting that represented on the printed page. If you run low on toner, you’ll notice that the image begins getting lighter and lighter on the printed page. And of course, if you run out of toner, nothing will print on that paper.
Sometimes that photosensitive drum, which we refer to as the OPC drum, or the Organic Photoconductor drum, is inside of the toner cartridge itself. Some printers might also separate the OPC drum from the toner itself. That toner cartridge, or OPC drum, by itself are always shipped in a bag that prevents any type of light from getting in. So you want to be sure to keep it in that bag until you’re ready to install it.
The toner cartridges themselves are relatively modular. You power down the printer, lift up the cover of the printer, and you can pull out the entire cartridge from the system. From there, you can take the new toner cartridge, remove any of the packing strips or any of the packing materials, place it into the printer, and restart the printer.
Here’s a view of a toner cartridge where the protective cover has been pulled away from the photosensitive drum. This is not something you’ll want to do with your toner cartridge, but you can see how the drum itself and the toner cartridge are integrated together.
Some laser printers replace the toner cartridge from the top of the printer. Or you might have a printer like this one, where the toner cartridge is pulled out from the side. And if you have a color laser printer, you may have multiple cartridges, all with different colors, and you’ll need to put those in their appropriate slot inside the laser printer.
With all of those moving parts inside of a laser printer, eventually, pieces of the printer will begin to wear out. Fortunately, most laser printer manufacturers will create a maintenance kit which contain all of those important parts that tend to wear out over time. These kits contain feed rollers, new fuser units, and anything else for that specific model of printer that needs to be occasionally maintained.
Of course, not every laser printer is used the same amount. You might have one laser printer that is used constantly during the day, and you might have another laser printer that is rarely used. You obviously don’t need to go through the process of maintenance until it’s required, but how would you know when that time might be?
Fortunately, most laser printers will have a page counter. So you can remotely access that printer to determine how many pages have been printed since the last maintenance update. Most printer manufacturers will tell you at which point you would need to use this maintenance kit based on that page counter.
To install the maintenance kit, you’ll want to power down the printer and replace those individual components that are included with the maintenance kit. Fortunately, most of these kits are relatively modular or can be easily swapped out inside of that printer.
If you’re working with a laser printer that has recently been used, make sure you’re careful when you’re working inside of the printer not to touch the fuser unit. Those get very hot during operation, and it does take time for those to cool down. Once you’re finished installing the maintenance kit, make sure you reset that page counter in the printer so that you can now monitor it for the next maintenance time frame.
When you replace a toner cartridge, you may notice that the new toner cartridge prints at a different density than the older cartridge. In that case, you may want to perform a laser printer calibration. This will print some test pages that allow you to determine if you’re getting too much toner or too little toner on the printed page.
There are usually settings in the configuration of the printer that allow you to finetune how much toner will be used during a normal print out. This could be something that is automated in the printer, or it may be a manual process where you have to evaluate the printed page, make the change in the printer, and then print a new test page.
As we mentioned earlier, these laser printers can get very dirty with the paper dust that accumulates inside. And if you do have a toner spill, it can get very messy inside of the printer. You want to be very careful when working with toner. It is a very fine dust. It can get into the air very easily, so you want to make sure you handle it properly.
Make sure you check the manufacturer’s recommendations for cleaning your laser printer, and most manufacturers will use water or some type of Isopropyl Alcohol, or IPA, to be able to clean the printer. You do not want to use any harsh chemicals inside of your laser printer.
On the outside, most manufacturers recommend using a damp cloth, usually with cold water. And if you’re working inside of the printer to clean out the paper dust or the toner, you do not want to use compressed air, which will simply put that toner into the air around you. The best practice is to wipe that dust away, or to use a type of vacuum cleaner that is specifically designed to vacuum toner.
If you do get toner on your skin, try not to use warm or hot water, since that could melt the toner and make it more difficult to remove. Instead, use cold water to be able to clean that toner away from your skin. If you’re cleaning components inside of the printer, cold water is a good choice. And many of the rollers inside the printer can be cleaned off using that isopropyl alcohol.