What's wrong with my laser printer?

NIMAN

I own a HP M177 laser printer.

Served me well for many years but of late it has started printing badly. A lot of the toners were low so have replaced them all. No change.

Also got a spare imaging drum for it, and changing that hasn't helped either.

Example:

If I try to print this photo

I end up getting this:

Any ideas? Is it dead?

feet of flame

I assume there are 4 drums, one for each colour, have you replaced all four, are you using generic or genuine cartridges?

NIMAN

There's only 1 imaging drum.

Replaced all 4 cartridges. They are compatibles, not HP. But I have been using compatibles for years without issues.

Alun

I was going to ask the same, on my Brother colour laser it has one drum per colour.

It looks as if it's only printing cyan and magenta, no black or yellow for a start, but even those colours seem really vague and washed out, and almost the whole of the left hand side of the paper hardly seems to be printing at all.

Can you print a diagnostic sheet from the printer itself, and if so what does it look like. Might give you some clues as to what's going on.

NIMAN

The test sheet came out the same, missing on the left hand side

maccored

what about the print heads? have they been clean/replaced?

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/clean-laser-printer-print-heads-59976.html

NIMAN

Didn't know there was print heads!

Will look into that

Alun

News to me as well.

I've never delved into the innards of mine beyond replacing the toner cartridges, but in a previous job I remember HP service technicians coming to a company I worked at to repair laser printers and often, especially if it was a printer that had seen lots of use, the inside would get pretty dirty with toner dust. I vaguely seem to remember there was a receptacle that was supposed to collect excess toner and that would sometimes fill up and overflow and toner would get everywhere causing patchiness and streaking.

I wouldn't be cleaning one out myself though, toner particles are very fine and potentially carcinogenic, the techncians had special vacuum cleaners with ultra fine filters on them, a normal vacuum cleaner would just let it pass through.

Alun

Oh yes, one more warning against using a normal vacuum cleaner on toner spills, the particles can create a static charge as they travel along the hose and if a spark happens, booom! The special vacuums have all kinds of safeguards against this happening.

NIMAN

I stuck a Gumtree advert up, asking to see if there was anyone local who might be experienced in fixing such machines.

I got a reply from a guy who said he could fix it in 5min, if I allowed him remote access to my PC!!