HP LaserJet 2100TN: What is a fuser and would it be possible to fix?

[Misha]

My friend is willing to give me his B&W laser printer: HP LaserJet 2100TN

It still works but he says it does not print as dark as it used to. Here is what he says.

Do you think, based on this, that the fuser is bad?

Here is what my friend wrote me just now:

Hi Misha, Do you want my HP LaserJet 2100TN? It works ok but prints light.

I?m guessing the fuser would need to be replaced if you want it to print dark although a new toner cartridge might also work. The printer says it has printed 37k pages and the fuser has a life expectancy of 150k pages so there is definitely life left in it. I was considering replacing the fuser myself ? you can buy fusers for about $30 and they are very easy to replace on this model. But it just doesn?t make sense for me to invest in this printer any longer

It has had the occasional paper jam but otherwise it has been great. It has two trays that hold about 500 pages each, 24MB of memory, and a Ethernet port. I still have some toner cartridges left but I don?t know how much toner is in them.

[Tony]

Fusers almost never cause light printing and on the very rare occasions that they do they cause ghosting down the page. Far more likely that it needs a new cartridge, bear in mind that cartridges that have been in storage for a very long time can print light. If the light printing is not across the entire page, cleaning the scanner glass may improve matters. Failing that you may have a failing transfer roller (or it may not be making good contact in its housing) but this is not common. A new cartridge nearly always fixes light printing. Tony

[Fred McKenzie]

Misha-

I think you can probably get the printer to work, and it should be a workhorse.

It is my understanding that the fuser heats the printed page as it passes through the printer, melting the toner into the surface of the paper. If the ink does not rub off after it leaves the printer, the fuser may be working correctly.

If printout is light, it could be caused by lack of toner, or the photosensitive "drum" could be worn out. Some laser printers have the drum in the cartridge, so a new cartridge would have a new drum. I do not know about that model, but it would only cost you the price of a new HP cartridge to find out.

I found a service manual at . Its troubleshooting section may be helpful.

Fred

[clare]

It's not the fuser. The fuser is a quartz tube "lamp" that heats the fusing roller - which melts the electrostatically deposited polymer/carbon toner into the paper. Either it works or it doesn't - (or just doesn't get hot enough) the toner smudges off the paper. If it fails totally the printer shuts down and gives an error code.

[clare]

I've replaced fuses on printers a lot older than that because it made good economic sense - but this was on heavy duty printers like Series

2 and LJ4000 printers.

[clare]

A 2100tn would be worth rebuilding the fuser on IF the fuser was the problem and you are handy enough to do the labour. The tube itself is cheap. A rebuilt fuser is only about $55 - $85.

I've bought the bare tubes for $30

[Jon Danniken]

Thanks Fred, I have an LJ2100 and appreciate having that manual now.

Jon

[Misha]

I'll try that first! Thanks.

[micky]

I thought the fuser was the heater that melted the ink particles so they became liquid ink and stuck to the page. Tony seems to say the same thing.

When the fuser isn't working the ink comes out llike dust on the paper and you can shake it off or blow it off. When the fuser isn't working at all what you get looks like a blank sheet of paper. I sort of think it's not possible for the fuser to be working but not well so that it gives a light image.

When I had a laser photocopier, made around 1978, the thermostat on the fuser was broken, and like I said, it looked like the page had printed, but all the ink fell off when I took the paper out of the tray, or blew off when I blew on it.

I have a B&W laser printer and it's nice that there are no little holes to clog or dry out. And that if I don't use it for weeks or months, it's still the same.

Mine has two settings, light and regular. Maybe yours is set wrong. Mine has gotten a little lighter lately, but I haven't investigated it. After it wears out or when it needs more toner, I'll switch to my dentist's printer. It was out in the hall waiting for the janitor to throw it away when I came for an appointment a year or two ago. They said it worked fine, but they were upgrading the computer etc.

There is a whole printer newsgroup that was good last time I had a printer question. Oh, I see you included it, comp.periphs.printers .

[Tegger]

[e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

The old LJ II and III printers used to have problems with the density board that led to light printing. Would the OP's machine have a density board?

[Malcom "Mal" Reynolds]

most laserjets that I've had had software (or at least a control panel on the printer) to adjust all sorts of things. I'd suggest checking the control panel and also checking to see if there is still a downloadable driver/control software available

[Misha]

I have no idea *what* a density board is. My friend had appletalk; is that the same thing?

Here is a picture of the HP LaserJet 2100TN hooked up at my house:

I plugged it into the router by the ethernet cable, but, nothing happened on the WinXP PC connected to the same router by ethernet cable.

Probably I need drivers, but, when I went to the HP support page, they had tons of drivers. But which one is the one needed to enable the WinXP PC (and the other PCs connected wirelessly to the router) to see the printer?

Which of these drivers will make the ethernet work?

1. hp LaserJet 2100 PCL 5e Printer Driver
2. hp LaserJet 2100 PCL 6 Printer Driver
3. hp LaserJet 2100 PCL 5e point and print bundles
4. hp LaserJet 2100 PCL 6 point and print bundles
5. 3 - HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PCL5
6. HP Printer Administrator Resource Kit

And, which of those makes the scanner part work?

[Misha]

Nice find! Wow. Very gracious of you. I love it! Thanks.

For starters, page 45 showed me how to print the test page from the "Go" button, and, guess what?

The results sure look dark enough to me!

So, now all I need to do is figure out how to network it, by reading chapter 3 "Networking", page 54. I'll open a separate thread on networking, if I have problems, after reading the document.

[Misha]

This printer has only two buttons, and that's it!

[Eddie Powalski]

Hi Fred, Do you have a similar service manual for an HP LaserJet 3200m?

[Tony]

I may have inadvertently misled you. The scanner I referred to is the one that is part of the print engine, the LJ2100 does not scan documents. I assume there is a JetDirect card in the printer, if not you will need to either add one or use a print server if you want to network the printer over Ethernet. Tony

[Misha]

I had never heard of a "JetDirect", but, clearly the printer has an ethernet port as shown in this picture below:

Also, the test pages that printed show under "General Information"

1. HP JETDIRECT = J3110A
2. PORT SELECT = 10BASET
3. I/O CARD = READY
4. SNMP SET CMTY NAME = NONE
5. TCP/IP STATUS = READY

[Tony]

Ah good, then Ethernet connection should be possible. Tony

[Misha]

It wasn't intuitive, but, I was able to set up the printer to print to the networked printer from all three platforms (except Android):

Windows XP ==>

Windows 7 ==> Linux ==>

If anyone has a clue how to print using Android on WiFi, please let me know as I don't know where to start.

[CRNG]

On 08 Sep 2013 10:11:00 GMT, Misha wrote in Re Re: HP LaserJet

2100TN: What is a fuser and would it be possible to fix?:

Well done. I like your use of the above .jpgs.