I've only ever had inkjet printers, but tend to do a flurry of printing and then not need it for a few weeks, need to print something important and the cartridges are all gummed up, needs nozzle clearing, re-alignment etc etc etc. It's quicker to draw a picture of whatever I was going to print!
Are laser printers better in that you can leave them for long periods then start printing again straight away? I don't need colour printing much, I prefer getting photos done by a proper print firm.
How lengthy is lengthy? One of mine can go a month between uses. My small (and old) laserjet 6L gets used all the time - much quicker and nicer B&W output than any inkjet and the ink does last a long time.
Exactly the reason I ditched my inkjet. Useless for intermittent use. I've just this minute, printed out a letter, the first time I've turned my Samsung printer on for at least a month and it's come out perfectly.
Shall I fire up the LJ1200 that hasn't been used since at least September last year? I expect it to "just work", and before that tiny bit of use in September it was sat doing nothing since the colour laser arrived about a couple of years ago.
Dusty or dry environment maybe so cover the printer when not in use? I have never touches wood had bother with them gumming up even after a few weeks without being used (with Canon and Epson). Nor have I had one go out of alignment without provoking it by moving house!
I invariably print something on it at least once a month though.
These days it is worth considering a colour laser if you can afford the sheer physical size. I have a Dell 1320C almost photoreal colour for about £100 and third party toner cartridges are available and work fine.
The newer Dell 1250c doesn't get such good reviews. Morgan have it with
2 sets of third party toner for under £100. If it is like the 1320 you need a steady hand to assemble it but that is all.
I have never known a laser printer not start up first time even after a few years in a garage! They do eventually go downhill when the print drum gets worn/degraded but we are talking largish print volumes here. If your problem is intermittent use you are not going to have to worry about wearing anything out - just toner costs which are less than inks.
The really big advantage of lasers over inkjets is that notices do not suffer from ink bleed if the paper gets damp or wet on a noticeboard.
I have a spare HPLaserjet 4L that has not been used for 5 years, just turned it on and did a test page perfect, my inkjet Canon IP4000R that i use for photos i have never had to do a head clean, sometimes sits for two months without use but always prints perfectly.
Hmm I have an HP 16550 and what stuns me is the bloody COST of the toner cartridges and the speed with which they empty...as bad as an inkjet.
If its bulk and white the trusty old HP 6MP gets fired up..
Nut et 16550 is a good machine - ultra crisp clean colour printing - good enough for short production runs. Not duplex tho - have to turn the paper over and put it back in the tray..
then you replace the drum. Drum and toner are the same item with an HP
6p. mine only died when the cat peed in it. I got another on ebay for 20 quid. Brilliant! I leave it switched off because its power hungry compared with modern ones.
I used to have an early 1960s photocopier (long since donated to the Science Museum) in which you had to do each stage by hand. It half filled the garage.
Rubber rollers seem prone to age-related "drying", where they go hard and will no longer feed paper properly, but that's usually over a period of a good many years (and isn't related to how often the printer is used).
It was a manual electrostatic plain paper photocopier. I think Xerox produced them in limited numbers to trial the concept, before making an automatic machine, hence the interest from the Science Museum.
The thing to be copied was placed behind a vertical glass plate, lit by a couple of 200W lamps, opposite which was a huge bellows camera. The camera could be moved along a graduated slide, to give an image between
50% and 200% of the original. After setting the copy ratio, you put a ground glass screen into the back of the camera, to set the focus.
You then put a coated flat plate, mounted in a wooden frame, into an electrostatic charging chamber, ran the charging cycle and slid a lightproof shield over the coated side, before removing the plate from the chamber. The plate then replaced the ground glass screen and you withdrew the lightproof shield for the required exposure time, which IIRC was quite long. Once exposure was over, the lightproof shield went back in place and the coated plate went on top of another chamber, which contained a mixture of beads and toner powder. The shield came off again and the whole chamber was turned upside down and rocked to and fro on a central pivot, to run the beads and toner over the exposed plate. The toner stuck to the areas that had not been exposed to light in the camera (i.e. the black bits on the image of the original).
Once that was done, the plate could be removed from the toner chamber (after turning it the right way up) and a sheet of paper placed, very carefully, over the coated surface. I think there was something to hold it in place. the whole lot now went back into the electrostatic chamber and the charge reversed, so that the toner was drawn onto the paper. ISTR there was a plus and minus control, although I forget which charged the plate and which transferred the toner to the paper.
With a bit of luck, you now had a piece of paper covered with black toner powder, which was very delicate and easily smudged. That went into an oven in the apparatus for a few minutes. When it was cooked, you had your photocopy.
It took about a quarter of an hour to do a single copy, although multiple copies could be done a bit faster per copy, as you could be preparing another plate while the first was being exposed and be doing the toner for that while the first page was cooking.
As an aside, i have discovered that for the vast majority of 'I want to take a copy of that document' type applications a digital camera is about 1000 times faster than a scanner...
I now routinely photo guarantee cards, activation codes and manual sheets and stuff them on the computer where I wont lose them..
In fact there ought to be a DIY archive of stuff like that..
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.